To promote the submission of creative business ideas, top business manager should promote and support, brainstorming sessions, during which a freely exchange of ideas about this specific subject can be submitted and debated. These brainstorming sessions should have very simple rules and should not be longer than 1 or 1.5 hours with a limited number of participants. For the success of the brainstorming sessions the selection of the participants and their preparation are crucial elements.

Dear Jorge

But the question is whether the organization should develop a culture whereby people brainstorm a solution within certain framework or limitations (i.e. out-of-box) or have complete freedom to brainstorm without any limitation at all (i.e. not allowing any box to develop) and thus can explore some solutions that may be radical.

The people should have complete freedom to brainstorm without any limitation outside certain simple rules to be productive in the brainstorming sessions and to get the best of the participants.

Think Inside the Box - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324188604578541843266186054?mg=reno64-wsj

Innovation Excellence | McKinsey Innovation Report – what stands out

http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2013/01/05/mckinsey-innovation-report-what-stands-out/

Looking at the reality then a company needs a balance between innovations and going into new directions and executing efficiently and effectively on the current business. Hence, the daily business and it's challenges creates automatically some boundaries ("box"). Key is to have an innovation process in place that overcomes those boundaries in a systematic and targeted way.

Another thought: Compare a modern company with a jazz band, if the bad plans only free jazz the audience may end up with a head ache after a couple of hours and not come back. It is just not in our nature to listen to something without structure. On the other hand, if you play hours and hours only the old New Orleans jazz people may get bored, too since every tune starts sounding like the other. In most of the cases the band will be most successful with a bebop type of playing: setting clear boundaries (harmonies, cord changes, rhythm, etc.) but giving the different musicians enough freedom to improvise (innovate) within those boundaries. Defining the right degree of freedom is also the key challenge of a successful company.

The Art of Thinking Clearly

By Rolf Dobelli

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Rolf-Dobelli/?isbn=9780062219688

Dear Mr. Saini:

Your question is quite interesting and very difficult to answer. Organizations need to create new products, if they don´t they´ll die. However, people feel comfortable and work more efficiently doing things they already know. So what can managers do?. As in many aspects in management, the wisest thing is to try to maintain an equilibrium between these two answers. Trying to do better or in new ways what your already do well for instance.

There is a dutch author, his name is Arie de Geus, who studied old companies (companies that have more than 100 years). He discovered those companies had transformed themselves many times during their life. ¿How they did it?. Sounds easy. These companies where confident on their employees, then, each time the organizations had problems, these peoples managed their way out, because they new those companies were good places to work so they did their best to keep them going. That made them innovate and create new products, The book´s title is "the living company",

regards

Gustavo Concari

Creative solutions must be novel and have utility. To determine if a solution is novel, you have to know what describes ordinary solutions, so in that sense, you have to know what's inside the box. You don't have to "build it" but rather just know what represents ordinary mundane work. Then strive to do something original.

Thinking outside the box brings forth fresh and new ideas, it would be like living in cookie cutter homes and this is what some businesses have gotten to, so when you have a chance to work outside the limits of the box, people tend to come up with some great ideas.  Look what happens when we work in groups for classes, everyone brain storms and each persons idea builds on the previous person idea and soon you have developed creative solutions to an old problem.  So yes companies need to think outside the box and with doing so this you take them and your company  to the top of the game.

In a faster and faster changing world strategy tools are no more than commodities. Any strategy tool can be found in thousands of strategy books available everywhere. All firms, all managers, have access to those tools. What can make a difference is the creative and intuitive thinking of, as far as possible, all the firm’s members. I call it strategic thinking (see, if you can read Portuguese, my book Pensamento Estratégico, - literally Strategic Thinking-, 2014, Universidade Católica Editora). You can also check Jeanne Liedtka’s research or the work from K. Ohmae. One of the “strategic thinking” determinants is what Liedtka calls intelligent opportunism, meaning to explore exhaustively the knowledge and the creativity of the employees. Strategic thinking has three main foundations: ability to think out of the box, ability to identify different ways of doing things and the ability to transform new ideas into something useful and doable.

So, answering your question, thinking out-of-the-box is a must for most businesses. But alone leads to nothing. Firms need to prepare themselves to take full leverage of theirs people creativity.