Drew Boyd is co-author of Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. He is a recognized authority, thought leader, educator, and practitioner in the fields of innovation, persuasion, and social media. He is the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Marketing Program and Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati.Drew spent seventeen years with Johnson & Johnson in marketing, mergers & acquisitions, and international development. He founded and directed J&J’s Marketing Mastery Program, an internal “marketing university” benchmarked by companies such as GE, P&G, Kraft, and Merck. Drew’s focus was on raising competencies in the areas of strategic marketing, market management, and new product innovation. Of particular focus was teaching employees how to systematically invent new medical products and integrate the inventions into long-range strategic plans. Drew is an inventor himself, earning his first patent for a device that makes spine surgery easier.Before Johnson & Johnson, Drew spent ten years with United Airlines, in sales, marketing, and strategic planning. He was one of the early pioneers of strategic partnerships between carriers that led to the creation of the Star Alliance.Drew served as an officer in the United States Air Force and completed a distinguished tour of duty as a crew commander in the Nuclear Missile Force and a war planning officer of the Strategic Air Command. He won the ICBM version of the “Top Gun” competition in 1980.Drew graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1976 with a Bachelors of Science Degree in Management Science and Operations Research. He earned an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Drew Boyd discussed his book: Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. He talked with Dave about why thinking inside the box is better. According to Boyd, “When you tell someone to think outside the box, you send them on a wild goose chase… better thinking happens with constraints, using a set of ideation tools.” The method in the book allows you to extract patterns from innovation and apply them to your own products and services. Boyd explained the division technique, where you divide a problem and rearrange it in space or time and re-evaluate the results.