Thinking Outside of the Box

By Deborah Tillett, TCV Growth Partner -

I didn’t grow up with this term as it didn’t seem to appear in our world until the 1970’s, but I did grow up “thinking outside the box”.  I was and grew even more so and have now spent most of my life “outside of the box”.  As I am in my early years of being 70, it’s been a long time thinking about “cardboard”, boxes of all kinds and other “weird” stuff.

My first memorable experience with “the box” was in the early 1960’s when I would have been 10ish years old.  I grew up in Lutherville in what was typical at the time, a small barely 3-bedroom ranch house; one floor and a basement – a real basement, not what we now call a “rec” room. It was Christmas AM and time to rise and open packages.  I came out to the tree and literally saw nothing under it! No packages – what?  Right then my mom grabbed me by the hand and escorted me down to the basement, she said keep your eyes closed and then all of a sudden, she said “SURPRISE”.  I opened my eyes to see a brick wall made of cardboard boxes; she had spent all night taping the boxes together, fitting them in a nook to close off a space.  She had painted the cardboard to look like it was made of bricks, cut “windows” in the cardboard and painted and made a front door.  She told me to open the door and WOW right there in front of me was a kid’s kitchen!  The hot toy at the time was a kid sized kitchen set; sink, frig, cabinets and a table!  She had set the table and set up the whole kitchen!  How cool.  We then turned a little corner and went into where she made a bedroom.  In it was a small baby crib with two, not one but two Thumbelina dolls; the hot girls’ toy at the time.  There were two because one was a “white” baby doll, and the other was a “black” baby doll.  Remember it was the 1960’s; the start of the civil rights era and my parents were leading the way.

So, my first but certainly not last experience with “the box”.  Fast forward to the early 1980’s.  I was well on my journey to entrepreneurship and had a very good job at a start-up ad agency, again here in Baltimore.  The founding partners were a spin out partnership from two of the big ad agencies and it was one of my learning experiences about starting, struggling and running a small business.  On this particular day, our President called us all together and sat us down and said he/we were going after the PlayBoy Magazine account, not the consumer account but the corporate/trade account.  The boss gathered us and told us we had one day/night to get it together and come back first thing in the AM with storyboards and drawings of how we would do the advertising.  He and the other execs would choose which mock-ups and who would be the ones to go with them to pitch the account.  I partnered with an art director, and we went away and stayed up late and sure enough next day we showed up ready to go!  Everyone else in the room that morning had their Storyboards and huge drawings (remember the 1980’s no such thing as Adobe or PowerPoint).  My partner and I came in almost empty handed except for a copy of a recent PlayBoy Magazine.  Many presented before us, and we were near the end and finally were called to the front.  I stood in front of everyone with only the magazine in my hand and could hear the scoffs in the room, but I was confident.  You see I was, in this case not just “outside the box” but “outside the envelope”.  I had just gotten a Birthday card with a chip in it so when I took it out of the envelope and opened it – the card sang Happy Birthday to me.  The chip was just hitting the market so – I stood in front of the group, grabbed the PlayBoy magazine opened it to the naked woman centerfold and all of a sudden, she said – out loud – “HEY BABY”!  Imagine – a naked women talking to you.  Well, we did it.  The boss took this idea to the pitch and sure enough we got the account.  Not sure they ever actually used this “trick” but it worked for me. 

And I promise, only two more stories and one is short.  The next recount is when I was the President of a joint venture with ABC, which was owned by Cap Cities at the time and then later became the Walt Disney Company and charged with starting a computer game company to get their key TV sports products into gaming.  The first game was going to be ABC’s Monday Night Football; the premiere televised pro football program.  It was 1995 and on the market at the time was the best seller “Madden Football”.  So not only were we a “startup” but we had a huge best seller to overcome.  I had to set up a whole company, hire a tech and marketing crew and get this game out there.  Good news, we had free wide access to the Monday Night Football “stars”.  Al, Frank and Dan – Lynn Swann; everyone who was well known and associated with the number 1 TV program. 

But that wasn’t enough for me, I realized I had a great budget and had an “Ah Ha” moment so I bought a bus, yes, a real bus the size of a Greyhound.  I had it wrapped with the logos, images and made it look like the “show” and I took out the seats inside and placed computers on desks.  I then made my crew and tech guys drive to every Monday Night Football game location and tailgate on the bus.  Well man it did its job and not only because we were there live but because my tech guys were ahead of the game and coded using the first version of Windows ’95.  That meant we had the first multiplayer, up to 16 players” computer sports game on the market.  We kicked Madden’s ass that year.  We went on to do ABC’s College Football and ABC’s Indy Racing and again had great success.  We were, however, abruptly closed down in 1998 when the merger with the Walt Disney Company became a reality and they realized we were in Baltimore, and they were in California.  We all got a good payout and many if not all of us prospered.

My last recount of “outside” the box was from 1998 when I entered an Executive MBA Program at Loyola University.  The program is no longer available, but it was innovative at the time. In order to qualify you had to have a full-time job and the allowance by your employer to attend classes on Friday all day one week and then the following week all day on Saturday, so you only lost two days of work every month.  The program was a two-year program with a fully paid three-week, international trip at the end of the first year.  That said, we were set up in small working groups of 6 or less.  This would be your group for the full two-year program and each week as we were given an assignment, we as a group were charged with our response and had to present every week.  As a group we would choose who and how to respond each week.

On the very first time we had to present it was the orientation “week”.  We were only just getting to know each other and we got together as a group and decided to tackle our assignment and prepare our response.  Given my last ten plus years in computer gaming and “tech” in the still early days of the 1990’s I prepared our response and presentation, and I created it using PowerPoint.  Yes, PowerPoint, it was a new thing. The presentation and use of PowerPoint blew everyone away and yes, guess what shortly thereafter every other group started using PowerPoint and the rest is history.

This has been my pleasure to go down the “card board” path and remember some ways that it has changed my life! Thinking "outside the box" can have significant impact on a business's trajectory. If you need help with creativity, feel free to contact me - Deb@TCV-Growth.Partners