If I hear one more business wonk use the following pep-talk bromide, “Hey Team, let’s ‘Think Outside Of The Box‘ on this one”, I swear I’m going straight for his neck.

That being said, if you somehow feel uncontrollably compelled to invoke this ancient, tarnished and abused shibboleth, please understand what it really means.

It actually does have an interesting history which dates back to, drum roll please, 1914!

Oh! Wow! Was that the sound of some fast-track, marketing up-and-comer, hitting the floor with a satisfying thud?!

The Box is not a ‘Box’ in the way that you think I mean ‘Box’. It’s not the box you get at the UPS Store to ship your re-gifted present to mom on her birthday… four days late.

It started out as a puzzle with three rows and three columns of nine dots. The challenge was to connect the dots with four straight lines, never lifting your crow-quill pen off the parchment. The only way to do that was to go outside of the ‘box’ that your mind told you bounded the matrix of dots. Brilliant!

I want to introduce you to a guy who not only thought out of the Box, he forgot there WAS a Box.

John Kanzius is a retired business man and former radio technician who six years ago was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. He endured 36 rounds of painful, toxic chemotherapy during which he watched children suffering the same, but not understanding why that had to be. John knew there just had to be a less destructive way to beat cancer.

He couldn’t sleep at night during the Chemo treatments and at one point he had an insanely wacky idea inspired by his youthful pastime of building radios from scratch. He got up, focusing on that inspiration, and began rummaging through his wife’s collection of pie pans, quickly getting to work.

Of course, his bride thought he’d completely lost it, but after tons of testing and over $200,000 of his own money invested, big league cancer centers have taken notice and are doing critical testing which has yielded very promising results. Click on John’s name above to see the entire story which ‘60 minutes’ ran as one of their most fascinating segments (sorry Andy).

So, kids, you want to think out of the box? Knock yourself out… just don’t tell me that is what you are doing.

However, I suggest you forget there was ever a box bounding you in the first place!