Flying Gators and Thinking Outside the Box

My wife didn't understand the question; "Honey, do you think alligators can fly," - she harrumphed a bit, "well of course not." I knew I had her..."well, uh, what about in a Hurricane?" She begrudgingly stated "that would be gross man..." "Oh..." my mumbled response drawing her further attention, "not gross so much, just real, probably - I mean; who could tell(!), in the aftermath of such destructive power, whether Gators had flown out with the rest of the swamp water or not! " She didn't smile, but she did grin. Thinking outside the box sometimes involves employing your mind in a different sort of way, visual imaging, for example. Then there is the other visual, a Florida based football team, they call themselves the "Gators", getting on a jet to go play out of state? Sure that one was easy. Now let's go way outside the box - 2015, genetic scientists...modify the genes of reptiles...oh, oh, now we're into ...dragons, aren't we? The whole point - you have been taught to think gators can't fly- but the truth is - yes they can, and do, don't they?

Is thinking outside of the box real, it is useful? Is it worth money to think outside the box? Is it a desirable trait to develop (?)- "hey wait a minute dude, you mean you can develop the ability to think outside the box?" Let's see...

Is there a difference between a snapshot image and the video images which we normally see? Let's take a transition and check it out- watch this (pun unavoidable); the President walks across the Rose Garden. See it, it's not tough is it, he moves toward the helicopter waiting on the lawn, and there you have it. Now take that same sequence and do stop frame imaging half way- look, he's frowning? What might be on his mind there? Move three frames forward, he isn't frowning, he is sort of whimsically smiling, problematic thought resolved? But the point is the imaging you run in your mind. We are increasingly a video of movement culture, but it is in the still shots that the thinker can move outside the box.

Is average ever actually average? If you are familiar with the bell shaped curve, we've been taught to know that halfway it curves up, then curves down, and that midway at the fifty percent point it is showing us what? If you answered - the middle, or the average, welcome to the way your friends believe- now let's climb out of the box- and we're going to use knowledge to do so. Look at that point on the curve very carefully, now imagine that at that point which we believe is an intersection, which really, it's like an actual intersection on a highway- with a stop sign. The entire intersection representing that point on the curve, isn't it going to be true that some cars will pull clear up to adjacent to the stop sign before they actually stop, while some will stop four feet back of that? Keeping it real, do the vehicles ever actually reach that point which is the intersection? Smile as you realize that the intersection is actually five feet into the square, well beyond the stop sign, isn't it. But what are our thoughts when it comes to average? Just as Heisenberg proved how frail measuring atoms can become, so is the fallacy of absolute zero, it's not an illusion at all, it's quite possible we live in a universe where you can only get close to zero, and close to average!

Corporations in America are facing a real challenge, they have become embedded with thinking that wants to get outside the box, they want to hire people who think outside the box, and yet, in reality, when originality comes knocking, they react to it much in the same way you and me might. The answer is to begin to understand that we have to pony up to what we need and support original thinking, otherwise, how will we know if gators really can fly?