"""But you pay someone to indoctrinate you with exactly the same methods and formulae that all of your competitors are using. Then you expect to come to not just a different conclusion, but a market-beating conclusion? That just sounds dumb."""

Counter argument: Creativity entails not only novelty (that outside the box stuff) but also utility, and in order to be useful, it has to go above-and-beyond what is already known (that inside the box stuff). It's about embracing what's been done before, because it's practice that gives us the capacity to build on the old ideas to make the new.

If you never venture outside the box, you will probably not be creative. But if you never get inside the box, you will certainly be stupid.