Lateral Thinking
If we say mathematics is addition and subtraction we are right, but we have over simplified the potential. If we say creative thinking is waiting for an idea to pop into our heads we are right but we have over simplified the potential.
Edward de Bono created a science of analyzing current thinking to find alternatives. He is given the most credit for the term and his book “Lateral Thinking”
He opens up the logical thinking of moving from step A to step B only if step B is right and correct. In this process, most groups would eliminate jumping to step D or allowing consideration of any ideas that are not right, correct or practical. We stifle creative thinking and group thinking by creating too many limitations.
In school, we were trained to know only right answers. If we knew all the right answers we were probably straight “A” students. We specialized in learning what was already known. There was little room for creative thinking. The world needs new skills. The faster we can depart from the known and accepted information, the faster we can lead.
But we have rarely been trained or encouraged to go where no one has gone before. But now that everyone knows all that is known, there is less profit in that knowledge. There is more profit going where no one has been before.
One process of Lateral Thinking is involved in changing Patterns or at least challenging the assumptions of patterns. In the early stages, the ideas don’t have to be practical or even make sense.
Let’s say one pattern is that when you go to a market or store you select the items you want and then go to the check out counter. Then you find out how much you have spent or over spent. How could you change that pattern? What if you paid first? You said you didn’t want to spend more than $50 and they handed you your own device to read the price labels. You traced each item you put in your cart and when you hit $50 it beeped. You could then decide what you wanted to do?
Is this a good idea or not? It doesn’t really make a difference at first. You are just trying to change patterns to come up with an idea that might benefit consumers and bring you more followers. Apply this to anything you do and you will realize that almost everything has an accepted pattern.
With air fares however, you pay first and they promise to get you where you want to go. When you order online, you pay first and they promise to ship you what you ordered. Could these patterns be changed? Is your first reaction “Don’t be ridiculous”? The first lesson in Lateral Thinking is to suspend judgment until all the ideas are on the table.
What if this thinking led to the idea that let’s charge a minimum price up front for basic service and have the right to add onto that charge if we exceed expectations? Let’s say we will charge you $100 to fly to Dallas but can add on $10 if we get you there a half hour early? Ridiculous? Maybe, but if someone in your group comes up with “ridiculous” maybe the next idea is brilliant.
An important aspect of Lateral Thinking is to challenge assumptions. The old test of trying to connect nine dots with four straight lines is solved by going outside the box to create different angles. We often come into situations with time worn accepted notions. Is the world flat? Could you sail off the edge? Is running faster than a 4 minute mile impossible?
What amount something more practical? Why do people buy cars? You might answer to move around from place to place. What about someone who doesn’t need to move around but wants the prestige of owning something special? Or what if someone buys a car as a collectible?
What if you were to make every car different so that its value was enhanced and became a collectible? Ridculous? Maybe, but if you challenge your time worn assumptions, you might find an entirely different use, process and therefore new market.
What about design? You are used to everything in your day being what it is. When you eat you want a knife, fork and spoon. What if the fork and spoon were the same utensil, but each was on a different end? Disturb you? Well its different and your sense of reality gets suspended. What about changing the idea of a chair or desk? Disturb your sense of reality?
Can you run with crazy ideas and look at things wondering if they can be changed? This has to happen at the work place all the time. Papers start here and then go there where Joe looks at them and sends them to Bobbie. What if we eliminated paper? Wow, what would Joe and Bobbie do? How would that work?
How about other concepts? Would you run down to the stationary store and get me more typing paper? Wow, its gone. I have to go further to a Staples. Its more inconvenient but I have more choice and the prices are cheaper. How did that happen? Someone assumed that you would be willing to drive further for the advantages. They were right. We didn’t need a stationary store on every block.
Would people ever go to a specialty shop and buy coffee for $1 when they could make it in the convenience of their home for ten cents. What assumptions were challenged and proven to be wrong. People would pay $1 and for a lot of reasons. They would even get in a line that wove out the door and spend 20 minutes waiting for the $4 cup of coffee. That’s crazy.
You have to expect a lot of ideas are crazy before they are proven. Do you know which are crazy and which are not? What was your latest great innovation? Don’t want to be thought the fool? Had lots of great ideas but never went further with them?
Had a great idea and a year later it was on the market? Had a great idea at work but kept it to yourself because the culture at work was keep it to yourself or maybe get fired?
Times are a changing. Fire up your imagination by allowing your thoughts of how something could be different to run into the alternatives. Play with it. Ask “why” more often. Look at things and wonder if you could make one change, what would it be.
If you could make things a little faster, smoother, enjoyable, what would be one change you would make?
Start reading books on how to be creative or innovative. Start to explore Emotional Intelligence and how you can present your ideas in a group or to a supervisor or investor. These are the skills we need that they don’t teach in school because they don’t know how.
But, you know what? More countries now are including it in their curriculum for young people and all the way to their universities.
Why? This is your first opportunity to wonder why things can’t be different and why people would be taught to be innovative. We might already be behind in the U.S. If we don’t have manufacturing and we don’t have new ideas, there is always farming.
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Other great books on thinking and innovation: Many can be bought used at Amazon for 1$.
Whole Brain Thinking by Jacquelyn Wonder
Innovation is Everybody’s Business by Robert B. Tucker
More Lightening Less Thunder by Bob Eckert
Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono