Boxless Thinking?

Boxless is a term that applies to any technology, medium or area of knowledge so new or groundbreaking that there's no existing paradigm. In other words, there's no box outside of which to think... it's boxless.

Of course, the most obvious recent example is the Internet/web, but that also throws up the importance of this term. Rather than adopt truly boxless thinking, most people tried to make the internet fit into existing boxes, and it's arguable that the first dotcom crash was partly caused by that lack of flexibility.

Note the word "arguable" in there - in my mind, Amazon and Ebay are about as far away from boxless thinking as it's possible to be and they seem to be doing okay. But the fact remains, it's important to spot when something is truly boxless and to act accordingly.