Why thinking outside the box is overrated

[Music]

[Applause]

today i thought i’d start with a very

simple demonstration that i saw

years ago that was presented to me by an

ex-boss and mentor called adrian holmes

this is a box and the idea

is to connect a with a b with b and c

with c

without crossing any lines a with a

and b with b is easy and if you think

outside the box

c with c is no problem which will make a

very strong case for thinking outside

the box but i don’t i don’t agree the

true solution to this puzzle

lies in thinking inside the box or

should i say the elegant and the better

solution

so a with a and b with b is the same but

it is this curve

that connects c with c that is the

beautiful part

in the outside the box solution no lines

were effectively crossed

but the fundamental rule of effective

creativity

which is staying inside the box was

broken

if you’re not convinced let’s take a

look at tennis

tennis is a game played inside boxes

there is a set of boxes for the service

there’s a set of boxes for the singles

there’s a different set of boxes for the

doubles but the best players in the

world

their genius is about staying always

inside these boxes if you took away the

boxes

tennis would be kind of pointless and

very hard to keep score and if you take

away the net

well you know where i’m going so what

i’m trying to say is if we are fully

conscious of the limitations

that reality imposes or will impose on

our solutions and we stay within them

and we respect them

we will come up with a lot better

solutions

the box should be what defines a problem

and let’s think about our current

situation we are trapped inside boxes

we are trapped inside a box uh we can’t

leave home we are

we can’t go to work we can’t travel

we can’t even go for holidays we are

trapped inside this box

and yet we’ve been in this box that

we’ve been trapped

for over a year we have come up with

behaviors and solutions

and uh and ideas

that i’m sure will not go away when

we’re outside our boxes

i am sure we will travel a lot less for

business

i am sure we will conduct a lot more

of our working life through video calls

i am sure we are going to video call our

friends and our family a lot more in the

future

i am sure that when we travel we are

going to stay for longer

all of these things have happened and

the world has been able to carry on

because we have managed to stay

inside this inside the box because we

have

kept trying to do what needs to be done

always staying inside the box yet

we are told constantly to think outside

the box

and what does thinking outside the box

actually mean does it mean

thinking without constraints does it

mean

never never self-censoring your your

ideas or does it mean breaking

the rules and ignoring the rules to me

thinking outside the box is

usually when you ignore the rules

and i believe that the limitations

are the ones that define the quality of

the solution

but i also believe that the limitations

should not define the ambition

a vaccine for the world should be

effective

a vaccine for the world should be cheap

a vaccine for the world should be easy

to store

should be easy to distribute and should

be very easy to administer

the vaccines that stay within that box

and within a tighter box

are better than the ones that don’t

in my business of advertising ignoring

reality and ignoring the limitations

that reality imposes

usually results in ideas that no budget

could cover

that the technology is not there or

ideas that are plain wrong

but if you define a box if you are clear

about the budget

about the objective if you’re clear

about

target audience and how they behave and

what kind of media they see

your i your ideas and your solutions

will actually work

what i do know you have to do is always

think with freedom

always look at the problem from every

possible angle

walk around it turn the box upside down

if you will

never self censor and maybe you can move

the box around you can say what if we

had a little bit more

budget or what if we didn’t talk to

these people but talk to these people

you can play around with the limits a

little bit but fundamentally

the box is reality the fact that a

person can’t fly

is a limitation but focusing

on making a person fly without killing

that person

is the possibilities yogi berra

the legendary baseball player and coach

famously said

when you get to a fork on the road take

it

in times of change and uncertainty only

those who embrace the difficulties

while permanently moving forward will

thrive

that has been the essence of our

survival and that

in this case will be the essence of our

revival so let’s go back to my business

in my business of advertising there are

many many restrictions

and and things that define the box and

not least that the target audience you

the target audience don’t really care

about what we’re trying to say

but one of the things that does not

define the box

is what has been done before so in order

to deliver

an important message an emotional

message that we wanted to deliver

during the period of christmas we had to

bear in mind that one the people

we needed to reach did not watch

television or mass media two that when

they left

their their their places uh where they

left

or when they moved they usually moved

around at night

and through very well identified but

uh very hard to reach jungle paths

we had to be able to implement uh

this communication piece literally

overnight and we had to do it across

very different and diverse regions of

the country

so thinking outside the box and not

not respecting those uh limitations

would have probably yielded a beautiful

film a

a beautiful piece of content of of a

homecoming

of people coming together um it would

have

almost felt like a soft drink commercial

for christmas

but that’s not what christmas is like

for for for these people these people uh

have were felt like prisoners they

wanted to talk to their families they

wanted to

join their friends and their friends

were literally

two miles down the road they just

couldn’t come together

and uh and so our solution

was uh completely

inside these boxes what we did was we

identified

some gigantic trees in the in the jungle

covered them

covered them in in christmas lights and

these trees were located

in in the walking paths that we used we

covered them in christmas lights

and they had a banner that said if

christmas can come to the jungle

you can come home at christmas anything

is possible

it was cheap it was visible it was easy

to implement

it was fast and at no time

in the over 50 years war that colombia

had been suffering through

had there been more demobilized

guerrillas that during

that period this led to other uh

incredible solutions that responded to

surreal limitations

but uh and and it also

led to about 18 000 demobilizations

which eventually led to the peace that

my country so desperately needle

needed if it was going to experience a

true revival

now let’s look at what i consider

classic

outside the box thinking quadraphonic

uh you probably have no idea

what that even means it turns out that

someone thought

that if you recorded music using four

channels printed the vinyl records in a

particular way

and precisely placed four speakers

around the room and placed yourself

facing in a in a certain direction you

would enjoy the music a lot more

the fact that you’ve never heard of

quadrophonic records or systems

but are fully familiar with the concept

of hi-fi

and stereo which respond to the ambition

that you want to hear music with better

quality

and stereo which means you only have two

ears

is in my opinion a very clear

example of how you should stay always

inside the box

there’s boxes and there’s limitations

everywhere

in my industry coming back to

advertising

during the lockdowns we have had to

carry on

shooting and producing commercials and

spots and

photographs and and communication for

our clients

and in this particular case

we had to ship equipment

and cameras and lights to the houses

of the actors and direct them via

whatsapp or via zoom

and have this whole setup and and

and and they they would film themselves

doing

uh or acting out their their scenes in

their living rooms or in their terraces

or in their kitchens or

or wherever that needed to be so a

typical

shoot would look like this

and the end result looked like this

so if you’re conscious of the

limitations and stay

focused on the result you want and you

need

you can keep your eyes on the donut and

not on the whole

you can remember that you need to get a

finished commercial

and not worry too much about it not

worry about the limitations the

limitations need to be solved

so revival is not really about what we

can’t do anymore and then coming up with

entirely new things to do

it is much more about doing what needs

to be done

in spite of the circumstances so if we

focus

on the task and embrace the limitations

we will prevail

and i think what you need to do is as i

said before look at the problem from all

sorts of different angles

here is an example that i think is is

extraordinary

the senior students of central saint

martins need

to work all of their last year of school

on a graduation project

and this graduation project needs to be

displayed and needs to be shown to the

public

and and during their their academic year

they usually have workshops

and they have tools and they have

teachers

and mentors around them and and the

university offers studio space

and it also offers display a display

space and it offers galleries and

and that creates interaction with the

work

and makes it easy for the students to

display their work and show it to their

professors who are grading them

and to the general public and

even though these are

difficulties themselves they are the

usual

the usual difficulties but halfway

through last year

these these students were working on

their projects they were working on

their

on their under graduation

projects and they had a whole vision set

out

and everything changed right in the

middle

and one of them particularly illustrates

uh

the the way these limitations actually

made the project a lot better

sandra polson is an angolan native

and she began a project where she

went back to her native angola and

started gathering information

and documents and artifacts and moments

and headlines and oral tradition

that she thought defined the

economic political ethnic and

cultural landscape of her native land

in her own words in a quarter here

this ongoing project utilizes a

selection of common household and gold

and golan items

to discuss the relationship between

family and inherited societal memory

from colonial angola and the civil war

the project

then evolved into prototyping and

building artifacts made of wood

of screen prints of metal slowly

becoming what would have

what should have been an impressive

display

of art research performance and a strong

confrontation with

reality but lockdown happened in london

sandra was confined to her living space

where she could not continue to develop

the work

in the way she had envisioned it in

search for a solution

she started to use the roof of

her next door flat and in that she kind

of

colonized that roof she occupied it

without permission

and then she met the owners and it

became

a literally a colonization which kind of

switched her mentality dramatically and

and made

and and changed the the essence of the

of the project

in her words i began an eight-week

self-led roof occupation which at points

i argue

perhaps became the actual work sandra’s

project

evolved changed and blossomed because of

her determination

but also because she accepted the

limitations and worked within them

and found herself in a completely new

and uncharted territory and i think this

is what

staying inside the box can do

revival is only possible if the

solutions we come up with or

the changes we come up with are doable

practical

and real revival in my opinion is a pure

act of stubbornness it is a triumph of

creativity over the circumstances

reality imposes the box imagination

is our weapon revival has to come from

inside the box

thank you

you