Over the years, think tanks have occupied and captured a space between academia, governance, civil society and public engagement. They have helped shape policies, inform governments, train leaders, and generate ideas that influence nations. However, the work is not yet complete; today, they face challenges and need to evolve into something stronger, deeper, and more meaningful.
The phrase “think outside the box” has always been associated with innovation and creativity. In today’s context, think tanks need to ensure they don’t stop at their boundaries or perhaps have none at all.
In short, they should not just think “outside the box: but think “like there is no box”.
This move becomes especially important at a time when there is a huge focus on climate crises, technological disruption, misinformation, geopolitical instability, urban transformation, demographic transitions, and growing inequality. Often, traditional policy models are unable to respond to problems that are deeply interconnected and constantly evolving. As a result, think tanks need to move beyond being repositories of expertise and become laboratories of imagination.
For a long time, think tanks have been identified as legitimate hubs of policy research and intellectual influence. This legitimacy was built on conducting rigorous analysis, developing evidence-based information, and advocating for expert, actionable recommendations. While these continue to be important, think tanks need to understand that, in today’s context, policymakers want quick, locally grounded, and interdisciplinary recommendations.
They do not believe in just getting theoretical analysis and reports. People are seeking greater transparency and participation, while funders want measurable impact and innovation. As a result, think tanks can no longer operate within rigid institutional boxes defined by discipline, hierarchy, geography or ideology.
Keeping the above in mind, a “no-box” approach warrants that think tanks rethink not only what they research, but also how they function, whom they engage, and how knowledge itself is produced. This can be done if the following points can be taken into consideration:
- Include and encourage an interdisciplinary approach; this is a necessity. Public policy deals with complexities and not always in a systematic way. For example, climate change is connected to livelihoods, health, security, infrastructure, and the environment, to name a few. Another example is urban flooding policy that includes engineering, governance, public communication, social vulnerability and emergency responses. Hence, to address this, think tanks should pool expertise from economists, urban planners, technologists, communicators, and others to discuss the same challenges. This is important since innovation occurs not “within” disciplines, but “between: them.
- Redefine expertise: In today’s scenario, the most effective policy solutions arise from lived experiences, narratives from people and communities, grassroots innovation, indigenous knowledge, local governance systems, and community-led experimentation. It does not rely solely on outputs from conferences, content from academic journals, or technical language from a single stakeholder group. To address this, think tanks that think “without a box” recognise that knowledge is distributed. They become connectors rather than gatekeepers.
- Rethink communication strategies: Traditionally, reports and information on policies and governance were lengthy and limited to closed-door consultations. While this is still relevant, digital media requires effective storytelling and interesting narratives to understand research.
Think tanks should engage with powerful storytellers (like brilliant researchers) who can translate complex and sometimes confusing data into compelling narratives that can be understood and accepted by policymakers, the media, youth, and communities. Using podcasts, visual presentations, documentaries, and public dialogues should become central to policy influence.
As a consequence, think tanks need to learn from one another and build bridges across different forms of expertise. For example, one should not assume that innovation belongs to only one region. In today’s world, locally led think tanks are brilliantly generating solutions which are rooted in contextual realities. Hence, a “no-box” approach requires a rebalancing of global knowledge systems. Partnerships must shift from extractive models to equitable collaboration, co-production, and mutual learning.
Think tanks should start functioning as a policy incubator, a digital network, a civic innovation lab, a community platform, or a cross-sector coalition. This may lead to success being measured not only by publications but also by public trust, collaborative ecosystems, policy adoption, and social transformation.
The phrase “there is no box” is a philosophy of institutional transformation, not merely a slogan about creativity. It challenges and encourages think tanks to move beyond traditional approaches on how policy is shaped and how and who create knowledge, which are usually inherited assumptions. Think tanks should not simply analyse but also help communities envisage the future, even before it arrives.
To achieve this, they must stop thinking outside the box — and start acting as though the box never existed at all.