Thinking outside the box

Posted by R. Berg on December 17, 2003

In Reply to: Thinking outside of the box (or square) posted by Lotg on December 17, 2003

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: : : : Who coined the phrase "thinking outside of the box" and when was it first used?

: : : I believe it was one of those business motivational speaekers like Covey, Dale Carnegie or Peters.

: : :::: There was a demo that went along with it. Nine dots in a square. The task assigned would be to join all nine dots by only using four straight lines. People would scrunch up their noses and think and think, but the task could only be done by extending one line well beyond the edge of the square made up by the dots. This was popular about the time of the 'Japanese Management that was going to rule the world phase.'

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: : Try it!

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: Didn't we cover this one a short time ago? I remember querying the term, cos we say 'thinking outside the square', and I was corrected (which was rather presumptuous I thought). After all, different countries, even regions have different versions sometimes of these sayings.

Yes, it's in the archives.