Recently I was participating in a conversation about ‘thinking outside the box’ and shared a story that happened when I first started working on an automotive assembly line. (How I ended up working there after college is a story in itself!)

On the assembly line, stopping production was a very costly no-no! If I remember right, it was something like $10,000/minute to pay for all the equipment and worker salaries when the factory was operating. When you first start working there, they drill it into your head to “NEVER STOP THE LINE!” (Unless it’s a quality issue, of course. )

I don’t know if this qualifies as truly outside of the box, but I did one project where I used several ideas that I learned in slightly different ways than they were presented to me.

Back in January I created a tool called the Amazon Deal Finder and placed it on my blog. Look up, it’s right there under the header. I had read an article at Lifehacker.com about how to manually create links to the Amazon search engine that would filter results by a preset discount amount. The process was very simple, but not for people with no tech background - I couldn’t imagine my mother being able to do it.