While researching my new book, The Dance of the Possible (Berkun Media, 2017), I studied the history of some of the most misleading ideas that have been popularized about creative thinking. Like the myth of epiphany and the other creative myths of innovation, these sayings are misleading despite their popularity.

Think outside the box

The famous saying, “Think outside the box,” has the illusion of being helpful, but it’s mostly useless. The implication is that you should challenge assumptions and test constraints, but those who use this phrase are betraying their own advice. If they were helping to solve the problem at hand, they’d offer a specific idea, or solution, that qualified as “out of the box” thinking, rather than simply saying the phrase and demanding that someone else do it.

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