Thinking Outside-the-Box May Only Result in Creating Another Box

Patrick St.Clair

BUS/ECON/ENGL 340

Interdisciplinary Research Essay

December 8, 2009

Thinking Outside-the-Box May

Only Result in Creating Another Box

Richard Bach’s story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, follows the journey of Jonathan in his quest to achieve a level of flight beyond that which is considered normal and necessary to survive. The author uses the character to demonstrate that what one may think of as being for the greater good of the community, may cause disruption and a certain level of chaos at the social level. It is important to consider the social impact of ones efforts. The final outcome may be a great accomplishment for the individual, and at the same time result in being forced out of the community itself.

Is it possible that a focus on creativity, encouragement to “think outside-the-box”, and the competition to “take it to the next level” is, in fact, putting us right back into the mold we are supposedly trying to avoid? The efforts put forth by the many companies and firms today, in an attempt to set their clients, and themselves, apart from the rest of the corporate community may be creating a short-sightedness that puts us back in another box.

Jonathan King, in his Journal of Business Ethics essay, Tools-R-Us, quotes K. Eric Drexler’s admonition to “pay attention to the big, basic issues” pointing out that it is important to look ahead and sort some of our issues and decisions into different clusters of risk. While we understand how to pay attention to the “very real risks” of certain types of powerful technologies being used by someone, or some group, with the intent to exploit others, such as destroying a corporate database from within, or contaminating a water supply, we know we must anticipate and do our best to prevent these types of situations. The second issue he mentions is that of unintended disasters such as the collapse, or crash, of a highly technological system resulting in a power plant meltdown, or computer...