Thinking Inside the Box
By Dr. Mark Turner—-When you think of the stereotypical accountant, does the word creativity come to mind? Are accountants as a group more or less creative than non-accountants? Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg, authors of Inside the Box, A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results argue “creativity is a skill that can be learned and mastered by anyone.” Anyone, I presume, includes even accountants.
Boyd and Goldenberg explain that creativity is traditionally viewed as unstructured and without rules or patterns. It is commonly thought that to be truly original or innovative one must “think outside the box.” Problem solving, then, begins with problem identification followed by brainstorming without constraints until a solution is found. Work by Genrich Altshuller[1], however, finds otherwise. His research, claim Boyd and Goldenberg, found that creative solutions have an underlying logic that can be defined and taught to others, and that is the substance of Boyd and Goldenberg’s book.
Their Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) distills creative problem solving into five templates that are readily learned and deployed by problems solvers. These templates are described Boyd and Goldenberg as:
- Subtraction: taking an existing product or process, identifying key components, and then imagining the product or process without one or more components – discount airlines without the frills, taking the cleaner out of a cleanser (Fabreeze), or taking the speaker out of a CD player (Sony Walkman).
- Division: dividing an existing feature or element into multiples parts – separating music recordings into separately managed tracks or units, separating the TV from controls (i.e. remote control), packaging food in individually wrapped portions rather than bulk.
- Multiplication: duplicate a component – three wheeled motorcycles, or picture within a picture TVs.
- Task Unification: combining separate tasks into unified components – Odor Eater socks, or toothpaste that fight decays, brightens, and freshens.
- Attribute Dependency: combine attributes that previously seemed unrelated now correlate with one another – radio volume that changes with car speed, telephones with cameras – who would have thought?
This is not to suggest that these templates were consciously employed for these particular innovations, but to demonstrate that a template can be constructed to explain the innovations. And, if the innovation can be explained and represented in a template, than the method can be learned and duplicated.
Engineers, Marketers, Theologians, Managers, Financiers, Philosophers, Computer Scientists, Physicians, and Accountants all have problems to solve. Is inside the box thinking a path to a solution? Read the book and then give it a try. It does take focused attention and commitment to for the tool to pay dividends but maybe you will be surprised by the outcome.
After reading the book, I considered how I might change a course that I have taught over 100 times during my career with a goal of improving learning outcomes. I began by listing important components of the class: lectures, text, tests, homework assignments, and papers. Then, I imagined what the course might look like if one of those components was removed. No text? No test? What would be the potential benefits?
In accounting much of the pedagogy of a course is determined by convention and the course text. I wondered if rather than using a traditional text but instead using a professional reference tool might encourage students to use the tool to answer questions in ways a textbook does not. In the past, convincing students to read a textbook before coming to class has not been particularly successful. But perhaps having a reference tool available might encourage students to seek out their own answers to questions and thereby increase learning and mimic how learning often occurs in an accounting practice (i.e. the real world).
What about tests? Mid-terms and critical tests produce student anxiety and often result in cramming. Is that the most effective way to learn? Perhaps short, challenging quizzes would encourage more frequent encounters with course material.
These changes and others were made to course pedagogy using Boyd and Goldenberg’s subtraction method. The changes are still being tweaked and assessed to determine whether learning has been improved. Time will tell if my thinking inside the box can help even an accountant be creative.
Associate Professor of Accounting
[1] Born Tashkent,Uzbek SSR, USSR, 15 October 1926; died Petrozavodsk, Russia, 24 September 1998, was a Soviet engineer, inventor, scientist, journalist and writer. He is most notable for the creation of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, better known by its Russia acronym TRIZ.