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Accounting InformationOutside The Box
by:
Phillip A. Ross
Outside The Box
Thinking "outside the box" or as it is sometimes called, "coloring outside the lines" is a popular idea in the business earth today. Folk and organizations are told to think outside the box or color outside the lines as a way to stimulate creativeness once
they need to solve problems like streamlining production, establishing a new product, or developing a new process. And it's true that creativeness and innovation often arise from unexpected and unconventional thinking.
But there is a serious problem with trying to apply such thinking too broadly.
For instance, creativeness is valued in art and advertising, but not in banking and accounting. An accounting firm recently ran an ad suggesting that it could think "outside the box." Do you actually want your business to be associated with creative accounting? Aren't accountants supposed to put the amount in the right box? Wasn't creative accounting a serious problem for Enron?
In reality, clean thinking and the creativeness that it produces are seldom
a matter of thinking outside the box. And coloring outside the lines is for the most part just sloppy workmanship. The art of clean thinking is a matter of putt thoughts in to the right boxes or categories. Clean thinking is a matter of mental organization. Conversely, sloppy thinking involves the confusion of categories, of putt ideas into the wrong boxes or not putt them in order at all. Is a child who wish not straighten his or her room creative or just sloppy? There is a significant difference. Piece creativeness sometimes looks sloppy to an outside observer, it makes not issue from sloppiness.
Picasso was a creative artist.
But his creativeness was not a matter of the art he produced. In reality his abstract activity is technically sloppy. It looks like the activity of a child. Carver could sell his abstract art only because he had antecedently
established himself as an creative person who could color inside the lines really well. Had he not 1st proved his artistic talent in the traditional way, his abstract art would-be have been worth more less. He used his reputation as a traditional creative person to establish a new direction in art. He didn't so more color outside the box, as he dilated the boundaries and definition of the box. But the point is that his abstract creations were valuable only because of his proved abilities in the traditional arts.
Contrast my own efforts to establish myself as an abstract artist. My art has gone disregarded because I have not been able to prove myself as a traditional artist. Not that I actually tried to do so, but I am exploitation myself as an example to do the point. The creativeness of a novel idea requires the discipline of order and structure to be valuable. Picasso's art is valuable because he was an accomplished painter who deliberately colored outside the lines. My art is not valuable because I am not an accomplished painter and I accidentally color outside the lines. Piece the two products may look similar, the difference is critical.
Creativity is more than breaking the rules.
Similarly, Joseph Heller was able to break the rules of English synchronic linguistics in his book, Thing
Happened (Scribner, 1974), only because he was intimately familiar with them. Having instructed English at the University of South Carolina, he was a master of grammar. And only out of his expertness could he creatively exploit, expand and redefine the boundaries of grammar. And so it is with regard to thinking outside the box.
Thinking outside the box apart from being able to think inside the box is worthless.
Such thought is just plain sloppy. Thus, the suggestion that creativeness lies in the ability to think outside the box is mostly nonsense. Creativeness issues from talent, ability and discipline. Talent must be bad and shaped on the anvil of discipline in order to develop ability. Great ability is always the result of study, discipline and practice.
Creativity is more a matter of seeing that the boxes themselves are inadequate and suggesting a better arrangement or a better definition. Creativeness doesn't just discard the boxes, it redefines and/or rearranges them after becoming intimately familiar with them. Real creativeness is always the fruit of discipline and order. Creativity, in order to be genuinely creative and not just sloppy disorganization, must emerge out of discipline and order as an intentional effort.
While a creative idea often comes unasked out of unexpected places, it requires discipline, study and order to do thing
of it. Apart from discipline and order, what passes for creativeness is nonsense, and to suggest otherwise actually undermines and/or weakens the creative process.
What makes this mean for our industry? Distributors and suppliers should apply themselves to mastering the basics before attempting to break the rules in the name of creativity. Don't start outside the box. First, establish your ability to think inside
the box. Master the rules before you suggest breaking them. For example, before a distributorship presents a wild, innovative conception to a client for a campaign, it should 1st establish its expertness with campaigns and/or ideas that have a track record of yielding nice ROI. Designers, artists, and copy writers should establish their mastery of basics before experimenting outside the box. For the most part the important stuff is inside the box.
©2002 Phillip A. Ross
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