“Living Outside the Box”

“LIVING OUTSIDE THE BOX”

by JOE WALLACE

Excerpt from Chapter 5: Recognizing and Connecting the Dots

Joe Wallace is the author of the forthcoming book called Living Outside the Box that took its inspiration from a series of situations where thinking outside the box never lead to action.

Finally, in a moment of frustration, Joe uttered the words “what good does it do to think outside the box if you don’t have the courage to live outside the box?”   The title and the idea of this book were born with that statement.

Perhaps one of the most referred-to clichés among the gathering class is the one about how important it is to be able to connect the dots. While connections are a very important activity when it comes to team- building and awareness, without the knowledge of what you need to connect, these gatherings are of little consequence when it comes to innovation or problem solving. The inconvenient reality about people who only talk about connecting the dots is that many of them wouldn’t be able to recognize a “dot” if it was served to them alongside their dinner.

In this context, dots refer to things of potential significance. Going back to the earlier example of the invention of the chariot, the things of potential significance (the dots) were the wheel and the box.  It took 300 years of making pottery on wheels, and storing pottery along with other items of value in boxes, for someone to connect the two as a potential facilitator of transportation. Attaching the wheels to the box in a way that did not restrict rotation was the breakthrough. Whomever did that became the inventor of the axle before intellectual property was protected or even considered valuable. Voila! At that moment some ancient form of a little red wagon was invented.

The original handle was in all likelihood the human arm but after a decade of splinters and callouses the handle was added to the miracle of the wheel-and-box combination.  The iterations continued, and eventually the wheels and box were strong enough to hold a human, and a horse was added. Since that day some 3,200 years ago we have had rolling boxes that transport us from one place to another. Without that early exercise of recognizing the dots and connecting them, we may still be walking from one place to another.

Author Bio:

Joe Wallace is CEO and Chief Innovation Officer of the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership that operates the Palm Springs Innovation Hub where he also serves as the founding Managing Director. Wallace entered the world of mentoring entrepreneurs and businesses serving as the founding President and CEO of the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville and Innovation Pointe where entrepreneurship was the prime focus.

Joe’s work has been honored with the CSU San Bernardino’s Spirit of the Entrepreneur Award, the R & D Top 100 Award, the Clean Air Award, and the Indiana University Growth 100 Award along with many others.  Over his career, Joe has been recognized as a creative leader who is not afraid to live his life outside the box.

Wallace was graduated from Stanford University with an MS in Mechanical Engineering and has earned technical certifications from both Harvard and MIT. With over 10 start-up businesses and experience mentoring over 100 others, Joe enjoys a reputation of a person with a depth of technical knowledge who applies common sense solutions that work to business and life.

EDITORS NOTE:   We highly recommend if your a CEO of a developing corporation this book is a must read for you middle and upper echelon management team!

Joe’s book is extremely insightful and intellectually based.