Think In the Box (but Make Sure It's a Very Big Box)

Whenever I hear consultants differentiate themselves asout of the box thinkers, I cringe. Why? 1. 95% of self-proclaimed out of the box thinkers haven't really taken the time to understand the box. 2. Saying you think out of the box with a business clique is an oxymoron. The box," of course, is generally accepted rules and best practices. The box is not as sexy as the rebel without a cause (or clue) but the box is what real, sustainable growth is built upon. Why does the box work? - because of the #1 rule of marketing, know your customer. Customers are people - and people want value, they want convinces, they want cool, they want an experience; people want you to make their life better, period. If you do that, you have given yourself the best chance to succeed. People today want the same core things they wanted thousands of years ago and what they will want thousands of years from now. Example: Thousands of years ago: The Urg ultra point spear will protect me from being eaten by a wildabeast on the way to the river. Today: I need 7 air bags in my SUV to assure a safe trip to the Stop-n-Shop. Thousand years from now: Acme quanta uses XJ-17 to make sure my molecules don't get scrambled during transport to Alpha Centari. Not wanting to be horribly mutilated is just one rule of the human experience. No out of the box thinking will change that. The human experience is the constancy that defines the box. Sure there are other in the box web best practices: solid creative, ease of use, coding standards, accessibility, search optimization, intelligent functionality, viral components, conversion and capture components, and many, many more. Yet all of these are guidelines to best facilitate giving the customer what they want in the most effective way. The history of the Internet is full of out of the box thinkers, most of which are now "out of business". Yes there are those that have succeeded. Those that have succeeded at out of the box thinking generally fall into two categories: 1. Significant best practices were applied and they really are in the box 2. They’re lucky Success is always possible through luck, but a lottery ticket might be an easier path (particularly if you have a 7 air bag SUV to get you to the Stop-n-Shop). Here also lies another problem with sustainable growth via out of the box thinking - any concept that brings success is by definition a best practice and instantly becomes a part of the box. I will admit that the Internet has brought a world of new success models. I will also argue that most of these models are variants of past successful models. The dynamics of the online world are endlessly complex and ever evolving. The box brings sanity, intelligence and predictability to this fast evolving world. The key to repeatable, substained results is to study what is common to all online success and determine a set of best practices. The key is to constantly be studying, defining and expanding the box. Our commitment to our customers is always to think in the best practices box and work tirelessly to assure our box is as big as possible. We call it the big box aproach to in the box thinking. P.S. If I titled this post “out of the box thinking would you have read it? (Now that is out of the box thinking, or is it?)