Lateral Thinking Tool #2 - The Creative Focus (Part 3 of 3)

This post will detail the final type of creative focus, namely the "Purpose Focus". This is the type of focus that most people are familiar with. In a purpose focus, you ask the following types of questions:

- "What is the purpose of our thinking?"

- "What are we trying to achieve?"

- "What is the goal?"

- "What is the target?"

- "With what do we want to end up?"

4 Types of Purpose Focus
There are 4 basic types of purpose focus, although there may be many variations and combinations of these. These are best thought of as different "goals" for the purpose focus: different "outcomes" that you want to achieve.

1) Improvement
This is where you define the creative focus as an attempt to get improvement in a defined direction. For example:

- We want ideas to speed up travel to and from work

- We want ideas to reduce the number of sick days that our people take

- We want ideas for simlifying the controls on a stereo

- We want ideas to reduce world hunger

If the direction of improvement is not defined, then the focus becomes very similar to a general area focus. Eg:

- We want ways of improving customer service.

Whilst the above example is not as open ended as a general area focus, it nevertheless opens up broad possibilites for solutions. Another thing to keep in mind when thinking about such a broad focus is to break it down into subtasks. For each subtask there might be a defined direction for improvement.

2) Problem Solving
This is where you have to solve a problem or overcome some difficulty. We know that we want to end up without the problem or difficulty, and so we define the purpose focus in this way. For example:

- How can we reduce the greenhouse gas emmissions of vehicles?

- We need ideas to prevent getting sick during winter.

- How can we deal with pick-pocketing?

- We need ideas to reduce traffic noise.

Some of these focii sound like improvements, because of words like "reduce". So there is some overlap between problem solving and improvement .

The main difference between the two is that in problem solving a difficulty/problem is clearly defined, whereas in improvement a change in a general direction (cost, time, etc) is desired.

3) Task
When thinking about a task, you're not just wanting to remove a problem, but to reach a desired point.

- I want to design an e-commerce website for my sports store

- I want to have 5000 people on my email subscription list

- I want to pass all of my exams

- We want some new ideas to help us get elected

- We need a chocolate that does not melt in the desert

Again, there is some overlap here with problems. To be honest, the philosophical distinction between the two is not that watertight, nor important. Often it just depends on how you word the focus.

4) Opportunity
When thinking about an opportunity, you have a sense of potential, of new things that might happen. Opportunities can be tackled as a general area focus, such as when you ask: "We need some ideas in this opportunity area of selling photographs". Further examples of opportunities might be:

- How can we use these new walkie talkies?

- Most people cannot afford to buy houses anymore - can we see an opportunity there?

- Broadband internet is getting cheaper - can we see an opportunity there?

- Wheat is incredibly expensive at the moment - how can we use this as an opportunity?

I think that when you deliberately focus on things as opportunities, then your mind automatically starts seeing the situation in a different light, allowing you to focus on coming up with ideas that make the most of the situation. The above example of wheat being incredibly expensive is causing major problems to over 1 billion of the worlds poorest people, and is an intolerable problem. But at the same time, it does raise opportunities - if wheat is so expensive, then it is in high demand. Is there some way of allowing/helping the worlds poor to grow wheat for themselves, so they don't have to pay for it, and at the same time sell it for a good price? I'm sure there is much thinking that can be done (and needs to be done) in this area.

Well, we've come to the end of our three part series on The Creative Focus. You now have the tool to choose things to think about in a disciplined and deliberate manner. This is the first step along the road of becoming a better thinker (and in particular, a lateral thinker). In future posts, I'll be examining more advanced thinking tools, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is an exercise for you:

1) Choose a general area focus - "I want some ideas in the area of...."

2) Come up with (3) ideas in that area.

3) Turn those (3) ideas into a purpose focus, and write them down.

4) Do this once a day for the next week.