Innovation outside the box and inside the box

Many people talk about thinking out of the box, but what is the box ? and is it worth abandoning it?

One approach is to think about the box as the set of constraints that limit the possible area of solutions. This approach is developed by Prof. Chris Rogers and Ethan Danahy from Tufts University. In this context innovation is limited to the box and one way of evaluating if innovation is happening is to measure the Solution Diversity by looking at where in this area are the solutions located.

Of course one should carefully assess and challenge the constraints, and thus redefine the box.