Lateral Thinking

One uses the reversal procedure in order to escape from the absolute necessity to look at the situation in the standard way. It does not matter whether the new way makes sense or not for once one escapes then it becomes easier to move in other directions as well.

Design:

An apple picking machine.

A potato peeling machine.

A cart to go over rough ground.

A cup that cannot spill.

A machine to dig tunnels.

A device to help cars to park.

Redesign:

The human body.

A new milk bottle.

A chair.

A school.

A new type of clothes.

A better umbrella.

Organizational:

How to build a house very quickly.

How to arrange the checkout counters in a supermarket.

How to organize garbage collection.

How to organize shopping to take up the least time.

How to put a drain across a busy road.

. Resist the temptation to judge. Resist the temptation to say, ‘this would not work because…’
2. Resist the temptation to choose one way of doing things as being much better than any other for fear of polarizing design in one direction.
3. Emphasize the variety of the different ways of carrying out a particular function. List the different suggestions and add others of one’s own.
4. Try and look at the function underlying a particular design. Try to separate the intention of the designer from the actual way this was carried out.
5. Note the features that have been put there for a functional purpose and the ones that are there as ornaments to complete the picture.
6. Question certain points — not in order to destroy them but in order to find out if there was any special reason behind them which may not be manifest.
7. Note the borrowing of complete designs from what might have been seen on television, in the cinema or in comics.

Thus even though one had been correct at each stage one would still have to restructure the situation before being able to proceed.

Lateral thinking is closely related to creativity. But whereas creativity is too often only the description of a result, lateral thinking is the description of a process.

For instance in lateral thinking one uses information not for its own sake but for its effect. In lateral thinking one may have to be wrong at some stage in order to achieve a correct solution; in vertical thinking (logic or mathematics) this would be impossible. In lateral thinking one may deliberately seek out irrelevant information; in vertical thinking one selects out only what is relevant.

Lateral thinking is concerned with restructuring such patterns (insight)

The purpose of thinking is to collect information and to make the best possible use of it.

The need for lateral thinking arises from the limitations of the behaviour of mind as a self-maximizing memory system.

and provoking new ones (creativity). Lateral and vertical thinking are complementary. Skill in both is necessary. Yet the emphasis in education has always been exclusively on vertical thinking.