Editorial Review:
Douglas Rushkoff was one of the first social commentators to identify the new culture around the internet. He has spent nearly a decade advising companies on the ways they can re–orient their businesses to the transformations the internet has caused. Through his speaking and consulting, Rushkoff has discovered an important and unrecognized shift in American business. Too many companies are panicked and operating in survival mode when the worst of the crisis has already passed. Likening the internet transformation to the intellectual and technological ferment of the Enlightment, Rushkoff suggests we have a remarkable opportunity to re–integrate our new perspective with the work we actually do. Instead of running around trying to "think out of the box," Rushkoff demonstrates, now is the time to "get back in the box" and improve the way we do our jobs, run our operations and drive innovation from the ground up. Combining stories gleaned from his consulting with a thrilling tour of history's dramatic moments and clever readings of cultural shift we've just experienced, Rushkoff offers a compelling vision of the simple and effective ways businesses can re–invigorate themselves.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
A paradigm shifter 2007-04-27
A great book. Reading this was like a breath of fresh air and really changed my thinking about technology, innovation, design and the hope for creating a livable world.
Great Wake-Up Call 2007-04-02
One of the best books on taking an outside look into how we do business, live and experience the world as people, not just consumers.Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out
Great scope and depth 2007-03-16
I have read tons of books on business practice and ethos. Rushkoff brought a great mix of theory and practical examples that are working in the real world of business. This book is the business version of "positive psychology", which advises that we develop our strengths and most problems will self correct. In this case it is, pursue your deepest values and you won't have to spend all your resources on marketing. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is involved in an organization at any level. I am a pastor of a church and it has provided many thought provoking concepts to explore in our context.
Interesting new perspective on creativity and innovation 2007-02-25
I'll admit, it took me awhile to really get into this book. Once I got through the first couple of chapters of "Get Back in the Box" though, I couldn't wait to read more of it.
The author, Douglas Rushkoff, feels that we're in the midst of a renaissance in creativity and collaboration. As he puts it, "genuine creativity is a result not of out-of-the-box thinking, but of true expertise." Here's a great example he used partway through the book: The person that decided (years ago) to put a VCR and TV into one device wasn't really innovating. The person who came up with TiVo, on the other hand, was a genius and someone who truly had a handle on people's viewing habits.
He's got an entire chapter on what he refers to as "social currency." The retailers featured as noteworthy examples in this chapter include B&N ("the store is a social hub"), Guitar Center ("it's a place to try out pretty much any piece of musical instrument there is--and to play on it for hours") and the Apple Store (described as "a little cathedral"). I tend to think Starbucks fits the mold as well. In fact, this chapter got me wondering about what would happen if Starbucks and Apple ever decided to create some co-branded shops...
Here are a few of the other interesting tidbits I highlighted throughout this book:
** ...customers don't want to communicate with brands anymore...they want to communicate through them...
** Although we claim we want more leisure time, we are much more likely to find an opportunity for genuinely fulfilling engagement and learning at work.
** It's about learning to tinker, to tweak, and to test the most basic, underlying assumptions of one's core business or technology.
** (Regarding focus groups...) In the vast majority of the dozens of groups I've observed or led, the purpose was less to glean new insights than to confirm the insights already held.
This turned out to be a very enjoyable book with all sorts of great observations.
It should be titled "Get off the sphere"  2007-02-09
Where to start...
I rated this 4 stars; 5 stars for being thought provoking and reinforcing my notions of what businesses should be concerned with, and 3 stars for the authors glaring examples of old-renaissance ideas/execution that didn't/don't work, yet providing nothing more than hindsight.
I agree with the previous post that the first half of the book was better than the second half. There are so many examples that are counter to the authors examples, but I'll give a few here.
First, in the absense of fullfilment opportunity exists. While Wal-Mart may be an evil company for some of its practices it also provides people in developing countries with a job, where none may have existed before. If you have no food and someone gives you a scrap then you at least survive to move onto a larger portion. If those who are employed at Wal-Mart cannot find another job that pays more than minimum wage then I would suggest going to a library and start learning...it has free internet access...
Second, many of the arguments made throughout the book are based on a circular reference that is incapable of breaking down, when in fact it would break down. If a=b=c=d...y=z and z=a then for values of a-z that fluctuate so does the continuum. Every example given in the book relating to whatever currency units are give follows the same principle: that at some point, hidden beneath the guise of logic and play, energy will need to be expended that is not optimally or even close to optimally what any person would normally do in search of or in realizing the new renaissance. This breaks the whole model and I suppose it also degrades innovation at the same time.
Third, open-source software, though trendy, has limitations. Imagine a world where function a is performed via single open-source project composing of a single developer, then fast-foward t years where function a is now performed by 1000 different projects each with 1000 developers (who share the same egos), in the meantime you have some number of function a demand satisfied by 1000 projects so a/1000. All of the sudden you have function b that people just though of at t+1 days, but only a small portion like 1% of function a projects are compatible...but the developers of function a projects not wanting their egos to be crushed realize this and perhaps migrate over to the small % of function a projects that are compatible...leaving the other 99% of function a projects to be picked up by some developer(s), whos egos aren't as big, to try and work something out with function b compatibility. Now you have function a compatible projects with a huge number of developers wanting to make their mark with function b, but the 99% of the people who utilize function a and now function b must switch to projects that are fully compatible and relearn, etc. The point is that people want recognition, however good or bad that may be, but it's the truth...even authors put their name, photo, etc.
Fourth, I agree that understanding your "core competencies" are very important and understanding the "source code" and "patterns" is nice, but what really got me was how high people must be in order to realize that this is the path to eternal bliss or "play." I mean who in their right mind would choose to clean out a septic tank as a way of "playing" or even perform surgery on someone's brain...just for fun, when you know that someone's life depended on whether you were qualified or not. If you aren't qualified then doesn't that introduce a classe system of sorts? Who would regulate this...would this person think that telling someone they are incompetent was "playing?" It's clear that any system which qualifies someone as being able to perform a specific action, no matter how much fun they might have, is clearly old renaissance and the illusion of new renaissance is just that (not in entirety, but practicality).
Fifth, while some people prefer to solve challenging problems, others would rather just sit around surfing, etc. What do we do with those people? Where would they get their surfboards, wax, wetsuits, food? I'll tell you who...the people that have enough resources at their disposal to just sit back and ponder how the old renaissance is coming to an end in favor of the new renaissance.
Sixth, peoples faith often becomes a paramount influence in the actions they undertake. Some are at extreme ends and radicalize what is otherwise a very moral and just view of how things should be. These radicals often carry out actions against others because their convictions are so strong and so outside of the middle that even if the middle moves it will not be enough so enough will be "encouraged." This artificial skewing leads to others ultimately forgoing "play" in order to build a counter-trend necessary to prevent skewing that is non-organic. In the end you have a reduction in pure innovation (good) and an increase in pure existence. I'm guessing that the author was too busy contemplating whether or not we could he didn't think whether or not we should...
Seven, the book discusses how currency became the demise of society as it pertains to interest, greed, etc. However, in the Paypal example he exalts that business for being upstanding and trying this new thing, but it ultimately fails because of the banks...yada, yada, yada. Anyways, Paypal was earning interest on the float vs. charging money for its service. How is that new renaissance? If we take the banks out of the equation so that interest is no longer accrued then who pays for the hosting, data, maybe it's those people who like to play in data centers. But then, who builds the steel racks, elevated floors, servers, ethernet cables, routers, switches, supplies power, constructs the building, stays up all night trying to figure out why no interest is being accrued :)
Well, that was more of a rant than anything else. I'm glad this book cemented my ideas about open-source software and about how so many company executives are in such disrepair. Innovation...hmmm...whenever I have a bug in software I usually just open a debugging program that I purchased and print-out the portion of code via a printer, utilizing a driver, written by some person of gets off on that sorta thing...but would they do it for free if there other needs weren't being met...I don't think so.
There's a reason why doctors get paid so much money, there's are reason why people do jobs they wouldn't otherwise do, there's a reason why the new renaissance only exists in the imagination of Gene Roddenberry. The have's and the have not's exist today, and perhaps in the 21st century we can combat much of this gap; however, until everyone is content with their existence and opportunity for existence then we will not reach the new renaissance. Indeed, it will only exist where truly innovative ideas take place...our isolated dreams...
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