Just think beyond and not outside the box.
When we think outside the box,
the box still remains and acts as a point of reference. However much we want to
be away from the box, we will still think in terms of the box.
Consider, for example, that you
are in a car going from one City A to another City B. What’s the fastest way to
get there? Most people simply try to map out the most efficient route. Others
take it a step further, weighing factors such as traffic, time of day, and rest
stops. And still, others develop a plan to rotate drivers so they can limit
stops and drive all night.
Most of the possible options you
will think of will center on the car and traveling by road. The car becomes the
box. The fastest way would be by air travel. When the boxed television sets
were around everyone still thought and designed television sets as boxed. It
continued till someone pushed the envelope and designed a really flat-screen
television set.
One of the victims of failing to
think beyond has been Xerox. Xerox was the first company to stumble upon the
graphic user interface and the mouse but failed to leverage it because it
failed to look beyond. It thought of itself as an imaging company.
Likewise, we become so much
encapsulated by what we do, what we see, what we capture that it soon becomes all
that we see. It becomes an anchor that stops us from looking beyond. There is
always something more than what you are looking at.
Apple, Disney, Google
were not amongst first in their respective businesses yet they redefined the
very essence of the business they entered. Because they intentionally tried to
look beyond what was evident. You can add Amazon, Walmart, Netflix to the
list. All of them just looked beyond the obvious.
But in order to be able to do
that, we need to observe, reflect, question, and keep challenging our
fundamental assumptions and think beyond.
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