The importance of Lateral Thinking

You may have heard of the term "Lateral Thinking". Its often used to describe creative thinking, where you look at a problem differently, and so come up with new ideas, new approaches, and new concepts. In this post we'll take a brief look at what Lateral thinking is, and how we can use it.

Lateral Thinking: Cutting across patterns of thinking.
In my previous post, I described how our brains are very good at organising all the information they receive, by forming "patterns" of thinking. These "patterns" are the ways in which we look at the world, and respond to the world (by "world" I mean any situation that we might come across in life). Whilst very important to daily life, they do mean that we look at the world in certain ways, which might not always correspond to reality. This is especially true of a rapidly changing world, where many of our patterns, our ways of understanding and responding to the world, quickly become obselete. An obvious example of an obselete way of looking at the world is pollution: people used to think that we could keep on polluting the world without serious consequence. This "pattern" of thinking is now outmoded and obselete, as we've waken up to the danger of global warming. And so a new "pattern" of thinking is required: one that balances the needs of industry with the needs of the enviornment.

"Lateral thinking" is a way of cutting across these patterns, to find new and/or different patterns, of finding different ways of looking at the world, and different approaches to problems/opportunities. The term "lateral thinking" was coined by Edward DeBono, and he describes this in some detail in his book, Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas. He says the simplest way to describe lateral thinking is as follows:

"You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper".

Lateral thinking looks for alternate places to "dig a hole". Analytical thinking, on the other hand, (see my previous posts), is more like "digging a deeper hole": things are logically related to each other, as one idea/concept builds on another idea/concept. This is fine so long as you're happy with where you're digging the hole! But if you're looking for another place to dig the hole, lateral thinking is what you need.

How do we think Laterally?
When thinking laterally, we're trying to cut across patterns of thinking, rather than follow them. In practical terms, this means that we're seeking to put forward different views. We're not trying to judge the views, or see whether they are practical or not (this analysis comes later). We're simply trying to get as many different views of a sitution as possible.

Its kinda like taking photos of a building from all different angles, getting as many "viewpoints" as possible before any judgement is made about those viewpoints.

2 Ways of Using Lateral Thinking

1) Specifically
This involves using specific techniques to change our concepts and perceptions, and generate new concepts and perceptions. De Bono has developed many tools for doing this, which we'll look at later on;

2) Generally
This is simply a higher level approach to the specific use of lateral thinking. It involves exploring multiple possibilities and approaches instead of pursuing a single approach.

You don't have to be artistic to think laterally
Its funny, you know. Coming from an engineering background means that I'm quite comfortable with analytical thinking. But looking at a problem, analysing it, and understanding it is one thing. Coming up with new and novel approaches to solve that problem is another. But according to De Bono, lateral thinking is a skill that anyone can develop, with specific mental "tools" that you use to change your perception and look at the problem differently. Thinking laterally, or in other words, creatively, is not just for those with natural flair and talent. Its for anyone who wants to do it.

Ok, up to this point in my Blog posts,we've seen how our brain functions; we've seen what lateral thinking is; now we're going to look at a few specific tools that can be used to deliberately change our patterns, and think laterally about a situation.