See LateralThinking, ThinkSideways.

But first, learn why the box is there! Much of the problems of modern living come from ThinkingOutOfTheBox before learning and understanding.

''Examples?''

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Dilbert cartoon I have posted in my cube:
	Dilbert::	''I need to think "outside the box" to come up with a creative design...  I push my chair into the hallway to change my viewpoint and stimulate my creative juices.  Suddenly my juice dries up.''

	...as the PointyHairedBoss drops by to say...:	''You're a fire hazard.  Do your thinking inside your box.''

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Inside the corporation I work for, the phrase is used so much and so often that most of the people who actually do or create things ignore it. In effect the use of the phrase is an example of not thinking out of the box.

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This is one of the words in ''BuzzwordBingo''.

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The title of this page starts with thinking. I believe it came into being as an expression that solutions to some problems come from taking a thought detour away from the norm and consider alternative solutions from other areas.  It derives its original meaning from techniques used to solve delineated problems. It is a thought concept, not a panacea. 

''I'm pretty sure it's derived from a puzzle involving nine dots to be joined by four lines, requiring you to literally think out of the box to solve it.''

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Psychologists have the concept of ''functional fixation'', meaning an inabality to look at something any way other than the way you are used to looking at it. Cognative scientists understand it an an example of the ''cognitive blocking'' phenomina. ThinkingOutOfTheBox is a strategy for overcoming functional fixation, implemented by deliberately affecting style of thought so different from your usual viewpoint that your functional fixation becomes unsustainable and breaks, leading to new insight on a problem.

Cognitive blocking simulation: repeat the word 'roast' out loud 20 times, then tell me what you put in a toaster. With any luck you said 'toast', but of course you put bread a toaster, silly, toast's what comes out. If that experiment worked, then lexical activation blocked lexical access; you fabricated an ephemeral box that, with any luck, you did your quick thinking in. Of course your basic worldview is more deeply ingrained (engrammed) in your capacity for thought than the word roast on your echoic short term memory circuit, but it's the same pattern on a different scale.