Do you think that people that think in nontraditional ways are more successful?

If you’re so far outside the box that you can’t market you product, idea or service, you’re screwed. the most successful people are those that think just far outside enough of the box that they can focus the most amount of energy on selling their nontraditional answers. Advertising is everything.

I think people who think slightly outside the box are more successful. Those who are way out the box are just laughed-at.

Maybe not initially, but in the long run they far more successful, IMO.

Oh, it really depends on what you mean by “successful.” Is the most successful person the one who rises to the top of a hierarchy, the one who makes the most money, or the one who is happiest and most fulfilled in his or her chosen life’s work?

People who think in nontraditional ways are not going to be a big success in highly conventional, structured environments like corporations. They give lip service to originality, and maybe they do want a few inventive engineers and creative marketers, but they reward the people who play the corporate game. Nontraditional thinkers die there.

A divergent thinker can probably be more successful at creative work and problem-solving but less successful at conventional occupations. The trick is getting paid for it.

Completely dependent on politics and funding and how you measure success. I’ve seen amazing “outside the box” (including a few way out) solutions to problems that never saw the light of day because they couldn’t secure the support or funding to productize them. At the same time, outside the box thinkers can usually bounce back and find other avenues to follow and problems to solve, and sometimes it’s enough to just prove their solution worked (or even didn’t). In that sense, it’s all in how you measure success, and many that I’ve met don’t measure it by profit.

Was Einstein someone who thought outside the box?

Hm.
I’d be careful with people who believe they think outside the box. Usually they just think inside another box. Usually it’s a worse box, too.

In general, if there are 1000 options, I think usually 900 of them don’t work, 97 are the tried and true methods “inside the box”, and there are 3 options that are both original and feasible.
I’d advise anyone to stick with the box unless they have a clear idea with other merits than originality that just happens not to be in there.

Furthermore, if we’re going to use this metaphor, there are many boxes you can think in, perhaps infinitely many. Some boxes are just really beneficial, like a box that delimits all the possible ideas to only those that have a realistic chance of working.

Further reading: The ‘Outside the Box’ Box

Only when thinking ”..in non-traditional ways..” is what is called for.

@Fyrius

hahaha I like to call my sense of logic ‘avant garde’ and sometimes it seems i’m trying to communicate with the box from outer space.

that said, i think it is vital to be able to communicate outside ideas inside the box, otherwise there’s an abyss between the two that sucks any definition of success away like a black hole!

all that said, if you can successfully communicate outside ideas within the box, it tends to transform the rigid prison like limitations of the box into a more dynamic, living sort of box.

>.>

<.<

if they are doing nontraditional things and thinking in a nontraditional way then i think they will be more successful but if you are applying to be the head of a fortune 500 company they probably want you to think a very certain way so if you’re wild and way too far outside the box i think in a situation like that it might not do much good.

Everyone is using that now-traditional, now-cliched phrase “outside the box” —that is not necessarily a thinker in non-traditional ways as everyone strives to find where outside-the-box is. I think synthesist thinkers are interesting and have potential to mark new territory. Taking ideas and information from different disciplines and c9mbining them to create whole new concepts.

It depends on how you define succes, what do you consider succes? And why are you asking this anyway?

I’m a divergent thinker, and it makes test-taking difficult and also causes me to burn the bottoms of many soup pots.

@Fyrius : So, there’s not really an “outside the box”, but rather, as the mind is systemic, no matter the thinking, one is thinking in a box, and therefore, boxes shouldn’t be so discriminated against, and that the crowd might at some point have some collective wisdom, so therefore we shouldn’t be afraid to think inside the box? How outside-the-box of an idea ^_^

Some (wise) guy said, “They tell you to think outside the box. But the pay is inside the box.”

I don’t know if it’s necessarily everyone’s idea of success but we’re more personally fulfilled.

It’s nice to believe that your are clever by ‘thinking outside the box’, but the box is usually ‘the box’ for a reason. True, outside the box may pay off huge dividends 1 out of a 1000 times but for consistency and overall competency, don’t stray too far from the good ol’ box.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

@Fenris
Yep.

But the real point is that deliberately trying to think outside the box is a misguided approach that usually only leads to very original solutions that do not work. It’s best to just ignore the box and look for the optimal solution, whether that turns out to be a conventional one or not.

You don’t even really widen your thinking at all if you declare the inside of your usual box to be a no-go. You’d still be limiting yourself.

@Fyrius : That makes sense, relative definitions of optimal aside.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

@Fenris
I agree.

@Jeruba
Stickler.