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:
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (18721945)
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (18741936)
“A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)