The View From Out of the Box

The actual process of insightful thinking, the ability to think Outside of the Box (OOB), is not well known. Perhaps because this way of thinking also involves feeling, synthesizing, or even dreaming, and not everyone is “wired” this way. Incredible patience for multi-step processes can be involved. Often inventors report that the ideas had “landed on them” or “come to them out of nowhere.” Or that they took a nap and woke up with the inspiration fully formed.

A few of my favorite examples:

Post-It Notes by 3M

This example has multiple parts. Sometimes your lightning bolt of OOB thinking doesn’t immediately result in success, or even acknowledgement. The wheels may just have to keep rolling for a while…. For example,

You likely have an assortment of Post-it Notes in your office or desk. I cannot imagine life without them. These little gems were invented completely by accident. Without a simple mistake made by 3M researcher Spencer Silver, we might not have Post-Its!

In 1968, Silver had the job of developing stronger, more reliable adhesives for 3M, but he ended up with something else. He created a weak adhesive that could be removed easily without leaving behind a residue. The glue also kept its stickiness when applied with pressure and was reusable. Well, great.

Initially, 3M couldn’t find a use for Silver’s invention, and it wasn’t until six years later that the adhesive was put to practical use.

In 1974, another 3M researcher and chemist, Art Fry had a problem. He kept losing his place in the hymnal books at church. He dreamt up a bookmark that could stick to the pages, but that could also be easily removed without damaging the paper. That’s when Fry remembered the adhesive invention of his colleague, and he had an “aha moment.” The adhesive would be perfect, he thought, and it was. Fry then started developing the notes using Silver’s adhesive for 3M.

One more coincidence would help shape the future of the Post-it Note. When Fry and his team began developing the product, they could only find yellow scraps of paper to experiment with. The signature Post-it Note yellow of today can be traced back to this “coincidence.”

After developing the product, 3M released the Post-it Note during a 1977 test run in four cities in the U.S. At the time, they were called “Press ‘n Peel” notes, and sales were discouraging. Customers just didn’t know what to do with this new product, and eventually, 3M decided to pull them off shelves.

Yet, in 1979, 3M re-marketed the Press ‘n Peel notes as Post-it Notes. To re-launch the product, 3M gave free samples to offices throughout the Boise, Idaho Metro Area. The plan was known as the Boise Blitz. The result: More than 90 percent of offices that received a free sample re-ordered them.

They enrolled the town of Boise in an exciting campaign of a new, free product.

And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Lavender and Aromatherapy

Lavender is a well-known and much appreciated plant, which had been cultivated for thousands of years for use in perfumery.

But in 1910 French chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé discovered the virtues of the essential oil of lavender. Gattefossé badly burned his hand during an experiment in a perfumery plant and plunged his hand into the nearest beaker of liquid, which just happened to be lavender essential oil.

He was later amazed at how quickly his burn healed, and with very little scarring. Ths inaugurated his fascination with essential oils and inspired him to experiment with them during the First World War on soldiers in the military hospitals for healing and recovery, and launch the science of aromatherapy.   

An example of the crucial nature of timing is shown in this miraculous discovery. He discovered the use of perfumery oils in healing just as he would have the patients and hospitals available for his research.

Stephen King – “Carrie”

Sometimes our insight needs to morph a bit to be successful.

The famous author, Stephen King, tells the story of how his famous book, “Carrie,” almost was not published. He intended it as a short story, and had worked all night on it until, upon reading it again, deemed it absolute rubbish, throwing it in the trash in his office before he went to bed.

His wife, Tabitha, picked up the three pages the next morning while he slept, and later told him she thought it was brilliant, but needed to be longer. He could have said “no.” He was writing it for a magazine that asked for a short story. But he listened, and expanded it into a novel, which was published as his first of 64 to date.

Safety Glass 

Today safety glass which will not splinter when exposed to shock, is everywhere-in windshields for cars, goggles for machinists, and windows and doors for many public buildings. Essential as it is, safety glass was the result of a clumsy mistake. Edouard Benedictus, a French scientist, was working in his laboratory. The year was 1903.

Benedictus climbed a ladder to fetch reagents from a shelf and inadvertently knocked a glass flask to the floor. He heard the glass shatter, but when he glanced down, to his astonishment the broken pieces of the flask still hung together, more or less in their original contour. 
On questioning an assistant, Benedictus learned that the flask had recently held a solution of cellulose nitrate, a liquid plastic, which had evaporated, apparently depositing a thin coating of plastic on the flask’s interior. Because the flask appeared cleaned, the assistant, in haste, had not washed it but returned it directly to the shelf.

As one accident had led Benedictus to the discovery, a series of other accidents directed him toward its application. In 1903, automobile driving was a new and often dangerous hobby among Parisians. The very week of Benedictus’s laboratory discovery, a Paris newspaper ran a feature article on the recent rash of automobile accidents. When Benedictus read that most of the drivers seriously injured had been cut by shattered glass windshields, he knew that his unique glass could save lives.

As he recorded in his diary: "Suddenly there appeared before my eyes an image of the broken flask. I leapt up, dashed to my laboratory, and concentrated on the practical possibilities of my idea. For twenty-four hours straight, he experimented with coating glass with liquid plastic, then shattering it. "By the following evening," he wrote, "I had produced my first piece of Triplex [safety glass]-full of promise for the future."   

Another example of how timing can be a crucial character in the plays of OOB thinking! A glass container falling, a newspaper article….

There are thousands of instances of this amazing way that people are inspired in the moment and find a way to follow through with OOB thinking, creating varieties of new technologies and happenstances in our world. 

An invitation seems to sometimes come

To widen the aperture of our thinking.

When we do, it may immediately display its magic,

Or call for our patience and reflection to let it season

Or turn through time,

To become the breakthrough it’s meant to be.