Background
Lateral thinking is a phrase coined by Dr. Edward de Bono as a counterpoint to conventional or vertical thinking. Lateral Thinking refers to solving problems through an indirect and creative approach. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
Edward de Bono was born in Malta in 1933. He attended St Edward's College, Malta, during World War II and then the University of Malta where he qualified in medicine. He proceeded, as a Rhodes Scholar, to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained an honours degree in psychology and physiology and then a D.Phil in medicine. He also holds a Ph.D from Cambridge and an MD from the University of Malta. He has held appointments at the universities of Oxford, London, Cambridge and Harvard.
Dr Edward de Bono is one of the very few people in history who can be said to have had a major impact on the way we think. In many ways he could be said to be the best known thinker internationally.
He has written numerous books with translations into 34 languages (all the major languages plus Hebrew, Arabic, Bahasa, Urdu, Slovene, Turkish etc).
He has been invited to lecture in 52 countries around the world.
Lateral Thinking will teach you how to think creatively, turn problems into opportunities, find alternative solutions, & dramatically increase your number of new and practical ideas using unconventional thinking techniques normally untapped by our usual ways of thinking.
Lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. A person would use lateral thinking when they want to move from one known idea to creating new ideas. Edward de Bono defines four types of thinking tools:
- Idea generating tools that are designed to break current thinking patterns—routine patterns, the status quo
- Focus tools that are designed to broaden where to search for new ideas
- Harvest tools that are designed to ensure more value is received from idea generating output
- Treatment tools that are designed to consider real-world constraints, resources, and support[1]
Benefits
It can help with brainstorming business ideas, whether they be new features, new products, new services, or enhancements on current offerings. It can help with your marketing campaign, especially in social media and viral marketing, where clever and creative hooks can expand your reach exponentially.
It can help with your operations too. Take a look at your current distribution system. Or product development process. Or accounting system. Look at it from someone else’s perspective. Are there ways to improve those processes? If you tore down all preconceptions and assumptions, are there new alternatives you hadn’t considered before?
- Constructively challenge
- Find and build on the concept behind an idea to create more ideas
- Solve problems in ways that don t initially come to mind
- Use alternatives to liberate and harness the creative energy of the organization
- Turn problems into opportunities
- Select the best alternate ideas and implement them
Not only people who devise strategy or work in R & D, but anyone who wants a disciplined process for innovation, idea generation, concept development, creative problem solving, or a strategy to challenge the status quo.
If you face fast-changing trends, fierce competition, and the need to work miracles, you need Lateral Thinking.
The Lateral Thinking Techniques
Alternatives: Use concepts to breed new ideas. Concepts are general ideas or general ways of doing things. Every concept has to be put into action through a specific idea. Thinking of a variety of specific ways to implement a concept is one way to generate ideas. Then each specific idea can be mined for additional concepts. Extracting a new concept creates a whole new pathway for generating further specific ideas.
Focus: Sharpen or change your focus to improve your creative efforts. This technique helps sharpen or change your perspective to improve your creative efforts. “Focus” is not commonly thought of as a tool, but it is. For example, you can learn to focus on areas that no one else has bothered to think about. Doing so may lead you to a breakthrough idea simply because you are the first person to pay any attention to this area.
Challenge: Break free from the limits of accepted ways of operating. This technique helps you break free from the limits of accepted ways of operating. Challenge is key to innovation because it is based on the assumption that there may be a different way to do something even if there is no apparent problem with the current way of doing it.
Random Entry: Use unconnected input to open new lines of thinking. This technique uses a randomly chosen word, picture, sound, or other stimulus to open new lines of thinking. This tool plays into the power of the human mind to find connections between seemingly unrelated things.
First, the person or group lists all the alternatives that they can think of without using the tool, Then they select a random word or other random stimulus. Then they juxtapose the stimulus alongside the focus topic and generate ideas to connect the two.
Provocation: Move from a provocative statement to useful ideas. This technique helps us move from a provocative statement to useful ideas.
Employees are often admonished to “think outside the box” with no instructions for how to do so. Provocation & Movement designate a formal process that enables you exit the box with ease—and return with a compelling list of innovative ideas to consider.
First participants learn the definition of a Provocation, or PO. Then they prepare for the uncomfortable fact that Provocations are deliberately unreasonable ideas that would be immediately vetoed by those who do not understand the process.
Harvesting: Select the best of early ideas and shape them into useable approaches. This technique is applied toward the end of a thinking session in order to bank ideas that may prove to be valuable in the current situation or in the future.
Harvesting both increases the number of ideas that are saved and provides a way to organize ideas by how developed they are at present. Harvesting helps you spot ideas that could be implemented right away as well as those that need more work. By Harvesting, you can avoid moving too quickly to choose among all of the ideas you’ve generated. Instead, take a longer look and make the most of the “yield.”
Treatment of Ideas: How to develop ideas and shape them to fit an organization or situation. This technique helps develop ideas and shape them to fit an organization or situation.
Treatment is particularly useful for working with Beginning Ideas to make them more specific and practical. One Treatment method is called Shaping. Here you think of any constraints that might interfere with the execution of the idea. Then you shape the idea to fit within these constraints.
Starters/Icebreakers
Four critical factors associated with lateral thinking:
recognize dominant ideas that polarize the perception of a problem
search for different ways of looking at things
relaxation of rigid control of thinking
use of chance to encourage other ideas
Prior to the strategic planning process, it is useful to enable creative and lateral thinking
Exercises are for fun, but also help people expand their disciplinary boundaries
Word Expansion
I
IN
GIN
GAIN
GRAIN
RATING
TRACING
CREATING
REDACTING
DEFRACTING
Exercise
How many squares can you see in this figure?
Answer
4 x 4 = 16
3 x 3 = 9
2 x 2 = 4
1 x 1 = 1
Total 30
Connect the nine points below with four straight lines without lifting your pen or pencil from the paper.
O O O
OO O
OO O
Answers
O O O
OO O
OO O
Remove 2 matchsticks from this figure to make 2 squares remain
Answer
How to Develop Your Lateral Thinking Skills
Lateral thinking is a special form of "thinking outside the box". Technically it is a way of intentionally coming at a topic or problem from a different point of view. But it also is creative way of thinking you can develop as a background habit.
As with anything you want to do well, the more you practice lateral thinking, the better you will be at it.
Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions
- Emulate lateral thinkers.
A major part of lateral thinking is experience, and the first step of experience is seeing it in action. However, most of us don't notice when others are doing it. You have to pay attention and look for it. When someone comes up with surprising answers or seems to think differently from others, pay attention to what they say and do. You can ask them questions about how they come up with their answers, but even just noticing that they are doing it is the first step.
- Study subjects you know nothing about, especially if they involve skills.
Part of lateral thinking is being able to get into another mindset. If you are used to numbers and spreadsheets, read about creative writing, or poets. If you are a poet you can benefit by reading about mathematicians and physicists. You don't have to become one, but when you open your mind to just learn about how others think - what issues and problems and tools they use - you prepare your mind to think in different ways.
- Practice your lateral thinking with creativity exercises.
Spend some time each week, or better yet each day, pushing your mental envelope. You can see some links to some creativity exercises in the resources section below, but you can also make up your own.
Lateral thinking in particular is all about bringing together things that are seemingly unrelated. So start with a topic or problem, and then find random objects or words or concepts to relate to the topic. Or you can push the envelope of your thinking in other ways by making a list of things that are outlandish versions of the problem or issue - exaggerate it, make it bigger or smaller. If something is straightforward and objective, like making coffee, find moral and emotional issues related to it. Get ridiculous, get silly. The key here is, though, to get DIFFERENT.
Use very exercise you find, but also invent your own. You need both outside and inside input to think in a lateral way.
- Look for ways to apply what you learn in everyday life.
Lateral thinking, like any skill, takes time to learn. And as with any skill, you learn more by applying it to real problems than you do by just doing exercises. After you get good at the exercises, start collecting issues and problems in your real life to start thinking laterally about, and set aside time to think about it. It could be anything from your need to find more time to spend with your kids, to how to decide who to vote for, to how to get a promotion or better job