Thinking in New Boxes

Starred review from June 24, 2013
Categorizing information is part of human nature, but in today’s rapidly evolving business climate, “pre-wired ways of thinking” can threaten an enterprise’s very survival. Boston Consulting Group executives Brabandare (The Forgotten Half of Change) and Iny suggest that thinking “outside the box” defies our natural tendencies and suggest that leaders, instead, should think “in the box,” but with a new mindset. In this entertaining and transformative work, the authors provide a framework and structure for creative thinking that even traditionalists can embrace. Through five steps—doubt everything, probe the possible, diverge, converge, and reevaluate relentlessly—they propose a sustainable creative process that will serve an organization in the long-term. Using examples from their research, consulting projects, and from major companies, the concepts come to life. Readers see how Generali Insurance, a 200-year-old Italian firm, used off-sites, interactive exercises, and brainteasers to create an Internet strategy, and how Netflix used reevaluation to reenvision and reinvigorate its business model. The book is both academically rigorous and highly accessible, with call-out graphics, charts, and optical illusions adding visual interest and illustrating concepts. Informative and practical, this is a must-read for anyone in a leadership position who dares to look at the world in new ways. Agent: Todd Shuster, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.

July 1, 2013
Boston Consulting Group advisers de Brabandere (The Forgotten Half of Change: Achieving Greater Creativity Through Changes in Perception, 2005, etc.) and Iny showcase their company's approach to helping organizations develop that next big transforming idea. The authors use the idea of boxes as the frame for their presentation--not the trope of thinking outside one but rather, how to organize the process to make new ones. The boxes are mental models that they contend people use to make sense of themselves and their world. The "new boxes" represent the idea of creating ways of thinking about oneself, one's organization and the world. The authors discuss a five-step process for bringing about transformation: doubt everything, probe the limits of possibility, encourage expression of different points of view, choose the options that seem to have the most potential for success, and re-evaluate relentlessly. They buttress their presentation with thought games and exercises and examples from the Boston Consulting Group's inventory of organizational techniques, which they have used with clients from around the world (e.g., the French postal service and glass manufacturer AGC Glass Europe). The authors focus on the case of the Bic company, which transformed itself from a one-box company--the maker of low-cost disposable plastic pens--into one that would be a "designer and maker of all manner of disposable, non-expensive plastic items"--e.g., cigarette lighters and razors. An array of brain-teasing games and ice-breaking-type techniques, which they call "warm ups" and "mini-world explorations," flesh out the approach. The authors provide some intriguing nuggets for thought, but the lack of discussion about the usual parameters of business success, like increasing sales, revenues, productivity and profit, is glaring.

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July 1, 2013
When trying to come up with creative business solutions, the phrase think outside the box has become such a clich' that it has lost any impact it might have had. Just what are these boxes and how do you think outside them? It's nearly impossible because our minds instinctively like to categorize and compartmentalize the world around us. Rather than thinking outside the box, the authors propose novel ways of thought organization that allows us to think in new boxes by questioning and modifying the ways we typically approach a problem. They do this with a series of brain teasers and exercises designed to put into practice their five-step approach: (1) Doubt everything you think you know, (2) probe for new possibilities, (3) diverge, (4) converge, and (5) reevaluate endlessly. It's an imaginative, proactive, and creative approach to problem solving that prospects for new ideas rather than trying to predict the future. De Brabandere and Iny are advisors of The Boston Group, a worldwide consulting firm ranked third behind Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company by vault.com.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)