Last year, I wrote about turning weakness into strength. A friend of mine shared with me another great example of this idea.

I recently came across this extremely interesting and disturbing article about a Japanese business model where actors are hired to come into another person's life (a la Truman Show), flirt with them, have an affair, and document the infidelity in order to then blackmail the individual.

I'm appalled that in a world with so much opportunity for creativity in business, we have people choosing to engage in activities like this. How much better this world could become if everyone focused on bringing people together as opposed to splitting them apart.

We often use the phrase "think outside the box" to encourage creativity in problem-solving. In my experience, many people incorrectly equate this phrase to mean doing something outlandish merely for the sake of being unique. The result of this kind of attitude can be an answer that is admittedly different, yet ultimately impractical.

In a college marketing course, we once brought in an owner of a struggling Italian ice store. As a class, we assessed his business model and made suggestions for helping him attract new customers. When we finished, I felt that our brainstorming session was overall ineffective. The bulk of the suggestions were either over-simplistic and expensive, like "advertise more" or absurdly outside the box, like going door to door or using a network marketing model to sell ice cream.

In 1945, psychologist Karl Duncker designed an experiment in which he challenged participants to fix a lighted candle on the wall in a such a way that the wax would not drip on the table below. To do so, he provided only a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.

Duncker found that many of the people attempting to solve his problem developed creative solutions, to no avail. For example, some tried to tack the candle directly to the wall. Others attempted to melt some of the candle’s wax and use it as an adhesive to stick the candle to the wall. In the end, the answer to the problem was simply to dump out the thumbtacks and use them to attach the empty box to the wall, which could then hold the candle.



Duncker concluded that the reason why most participants did not find this easy fix was because they were experiencing functional fixedness, or a mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem. In other words, everybody was so busy thinking outside the box that they forgot to think "the box".

Coming back to the Italian ice case, I think that my class was so fixed on finding creative solutions that we missed the practical solution, which was to find a better location. His shop was located in Provo, Utah, the only college town in America where students don't drink alcohol. Emerging from this drinking dearth, the market forces forces that be have filled the void with the only thing that Mormons are allowed to get drunk on: ice cream.

The last time I counted, there were over thirty ice cream, gelato, shake, and/or smoothie places in Provo. Most of them were situated very close to BYU campus. Our Italian ice friend, however, was located several miles away in place that rarely got foot traffic. In light of all this, my recommendation to him should have been either 1) move closer to the students in order to have a better shot duking it out with all of the other guys or 2) go to a city that was not so saturated with frozen saturated fat.

In sum, there are many times when thinking outside the box is beneficial for solving problems. But don't forget to think about the box itself, too.

I thought this was clever. It's a sling that shows what happened so that you don't have to explain it over and over again. I think this exemplifies that it's the idea that counts, not the technology.

"You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness." - page 58

I see a backlash brewing for a lot of companies that have been stingy with their workforce during the current recession. As the job market strengthens and people start finding outside opportunities, I wouldn't be surprised to see some groveling and bribery on the part of employers in attempt to retain the people who only stuck around because there was nowhere else to go.

Today I came across this story about Jason Sadler, a guy who will wear your company's shirt for a day and also blog, Facebook, and YouTube, the heck out of it. For the company, it's cheap advertising. For Sadler, it is a great job that earns him a decent penny and lets him be his own boss.

For me, this idea goes into the "why didn't I think of this" category. This is a great example of how creativity is more important than $$$ when it comes to marketing.

Sometimes the success of an idea can be determined simply by its presentation. When the owner of mycarnivore.com started out, sales of his venus flytraps were small. Only after re-branding the plants as fast-snapping, fly-chomping monsters did the concept become a hit. The beautiful thing about My Carnivore's business model is that no competitor can replicate it without being a complete rip-off. To me, this is a great example of using creativity to turn a simple business into a unique story that engages people.

Trendstack.com is designed to share the most intriguing and effective trends and practices emerging from the world of business. With a goal of chasing creativity, this blog will highlight well-known concepts as well and introduce new thoughts regarding entrepreneurship, marketing, consumer behavior, persuasion, and brand management, to name a few. Check back frequently and feel free to add to the stack with your own perspectives and ideas!