Bigger Boxes

One of the earliest posts in this blog discussed how to think outside the box by building bigger boxes. It's nice to see the rest of the world catching up with this line of thinking.

In May the Boston Consulting Group published a report titled Thinking in New Boxes: How to Bring Fundamental Change to Your Business. The authors hit on some critically important points that address the need for "boxes" and the ability to move from old ones to new ones. A key theme is that humans need models and frameworks to function most effectively and understand context, and we need to simplify things when we can. By simply 'throwing away the box" you're left with nothing...no framework, no way to understand reality, no tool for integrating your firm with the rest of society. You need something, and though it can be different from what you had before, at least there will be a "box" there.

One important element of your box is how you view the purpose of your company. Are you a search-engine company or are you an information outlet? Are you a video-game developer, or are you an entertainment provider? Once you adjust the "lens" through which you view your firm, it opens up new possibilities. Maybe those possibilities don't interest you, and if so, you should search for a new box.

The authors provide a few examples of firms that have "re-envisioned" themselves, and you can see the distinction between different boxes. Then they get to the tricky part: turning theory into practice. Though this is difficult, they also suggest that when it comes to developing new ideas for the firm, 80% of the work is in finding that new box. Once that happen, the rest comes relatively easily.

I'd suggest a few things that will help you put this theory to use:

an educated workforce
a diverse workforce
a culture that encourages risk-taking and new ideas
regular influx of new ideas from outside the company

These are just a few things that will help, and they don't require much effort. The biggest effort may be in finding the time to get people together, put aside the day-to-day work, and really focus on box-design. But as a good leader, you shouldn't have any trouble getting people to do that, right? Right???