Metaphor
This flexible English phrase is a rhetorical trope with a range of variant applications.
The metaphorical "box" in the phrase "outside the box" may be married with something real and measurable — for example, perceived budgetary or organizational constraints in a Hollywood development project. Speculating beyond its restrictive confines the box can be both:
- (a) positive— fostering creative leaps as in generating wild ideas (the conventional use of the term); and
- (b) negative— penetrating through to the "bottom of the box." James Bandrowski states that this could result in a frank and insightful re-appraisal of a situation, oneself, the organization, etc.
On the other hand, Bandrowski argues that the process of thinking "inside the box" need not be construed in a pejorative sense. It is crucial for accurately parsing and executing a variety of tasks — making decisions, analyzing data, and managing the progress of standard operating procedures, etc.
Hollywood screenwriter Ira Steven Behr appropriated this concept to inform plot and character in the context of a television series. Behr imagined a core character:
- He is going to be "thinking outside the box," you know, and usually when we use that cliche, we think outside the box means a new thought. So we can situate ourselves back in the box, but in a somewhat better position.
The phrase can be used as a shorthand way to describe speculation about what happens next in a multi-stage design thinking process.
Read more about this topic: Thinking Outside The Box
Famous quotes containing the word metaphor:
“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out.”
—Agustin Gomez-Arcos (b. 1939)