I may be wrong, but I believe that creativity involves thinking between boxes. 

“Why is being creative important?” you might ask? 

Well, did you know that studies show that creative people make 23% more money (on the average) as compared with regular people? 

Did you know that creative smile and laugh an average of 27.3 times per day, as opposed to 19.6 times a day for regular people?

Did you know that creative people are less prone to get divorced and live an average of 2.3 years more than regular people?

Did you know that people who think they are creative also love to invent their own statistics? 

Most people think that creativity involves “Thinking Outside the Box”. If you Google it, you get over 1,300,000 search results. Apparently a lot of people believe in it. “Thinking Outside the Box” even has a lengthy Wikipedia entry.

Many people think that creativity involves “Thinking Inside the Box”. If you Google it, you get over 200,000 search results. That’s still a lot of search results.

Less people think that creativity involves “Thinking Between Boxes”.

A lot less (less than one hundred search results on Google).

It’s combining two things in an unanticipated way.

Anyone who is technically proficient can solve a problem that is already formulated; but it takes true originality to formulate a problem in the first place (Einstein and Infeld, 1938)

Any creative act is a bisociation of two (or more) apparently incompatible frames of thought. (Arthur Koestler)

“Arthur Koestler (1969)” by Eric Koch / Anefo – Nationaal Archief. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

For example, what connection could there possibly be between sticky burs…

and zippers?

According to the legend, George de Mestral found one, in 1941, when he was about 35 years old.

They called it “Velcro”. The rest is history…

Another approach is to find a novel use for something.

Students are very creative in this respect…

Another approach is to find a weird and wacky use for something that already exists. What would you do with a cup of yogurt? After all, everything is connected to yogurt, in one way or another. If you disagree, write your suggestion here on the right.

And if all else fails, you can always write a book.