Think outside the box means to think creatively and look for solutions beyond the usual rules and patterns. It's most often heard at work and in education: in meetings, job adverts and brainstorming sessions. There's a British variant, think out of the box, and an adjective, outside-the-box: an outside-the-box idea.
When would you say think outside the box?
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think outside the box; outside-the-box + thinking/idea; (UK also) think out of the box
- We had no money for advertising, so we had to think outside the box.
- The teacher encouraged us to think outside the box and present the project as a short film.
- Her outside-the-box idea saved the company a lot of money.
What changed
First versionOur manager asked us to think outside the frames and suggest new ideas.
RevisionOur manager asked us to think outside the box and suggest new ideas.
If you picture limits as a frame, frames can seem the right word, but the English idiom uses a different image: a box. A native speaker is more likely to read frames as window frames or frames of a film. One word was changed.
The phrase is used so often in office talk that many native speakers consider it a cliché. In an essay or a job interview, it sounds fresher to name the action itself: come up with an original solution, take a creative approach. For example: The team came up with an original solution to the parking problem.
Your turn
Instead of raising prices, the café owner decided to ___ and started renting the space to evening language clubs.
Show the answer
think outside the box — Instead of the obvious price rise, the café owner found an unusual way to earn money, which is exactly think outside the box. Think inside the box means doing things the usual way, the exact opposite.
Write about a problem you solved in an unusual way. Name the problem and the solution.
When our team couldn't afford a designer, we thought outside the box and asked design students to compete for a paid internship.
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