Crafting “Outside the Box” Articles

Preparing for an article jam session with my ITU colleagues later this week, I have been thinking and reading about what constitutes an interesting/innovative article. The short answer is that it must “think outside the box”. But what does that really mean?
From my perspective you must first understand the nature of the box that you are studying before you can think outside it: Thinking “outside the box” is about pointing out incomplete knowledge/literature about a specific phenomenon and extending (or replacing) this knowledge/literature with new insights. Some people will argue that you need to discard existing knowledge as wrong, misguided, or incorrect if you what to innovate. But, I don’t think so…
“Thinking outside the box” comes from understanding where the box is, problematizing it, and extended it. Lets see if I can do that this week