CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS
LATERAL THINKING—TOOLS FOR OUT-OF-BOX THINKING

“One good idea can be worth millions of dollars!"

Lateral Thinking is a systematic approach to thinking creatively—outside the box.  This set of tools will help an individual or a team to:

(1)   Innovate

(2)   Be creative

(3)   Break out of our paradigms

(4)   Develop new processes and products or improve old ones

If you have ever experienced the “well going dry” when it comes to idea generation, these seven tools will guarantee you NEVER run out of ideas.  Ideas are the currency of success—they can separate you from your competition.  These tools can increase the number of new and practical ideas, build on the concept behind an idea, create additional alternatives, and spark creativity on demand.

Thinking can be divided into two methods: One is called “vertical thinking,” which uses the processes of logic—the traditional, historical method.  The other is “lateral thinking,” which involves disrupting an apparent thinking sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle.  Lateral Thinking is a way of thinking that seeks a solution to a problem through somewhat unorthodox methods or elements that would normally be ignored by logical thinking.  Lateral Thinking is based on the premise that most creative ideas are logical only in hindsight and are initially invisible to logic.  Lateral Thinking gives you the ability to see past those blind spots—to find new patterns and new concepts.  It gives you the power to create new, valuable ideas on demand.

The seven Lateral Thinking tools include the following:

·        ALTERNATIVES:  How to use concepts as a breeding ground for new ideas.  Sometimes we do not look beyond the obvious alternatives.  The Alternatives tool shows how to extract the concept behind a group of ideas and then use it to generate further alternatives.

·        FOCUS:  When and how to change the focus of your thinking.  The Focus tool provides a discipline of defining your focus and sticking to it.  This technique aids in the development of alternative definitions of the problem and a Creative Hit List. 

·        CHALLENGE:  With Challenge, we act as though the present way of doing things is not necessarily the best.  It is the willingness to explore the reasons why we do things the way we do.

·        RANDOM ENTRY:  This exotic tool uses unconnected input to open up new lines of thinking.  Random Entry (word, picture, or object) achieves true out-of-box thinking in an ideation session.

·        PROVOCATION:  Generating provocative statements and using them to build new ideas can have a powerful effect on idea generation. This technique explores the nature of perception and how to tap (trick the brain) into increased and expanded creativity.

·        HARVESTING:  Capturing your creative output.  At the end of a creative thinking session, we normally only take note of the specific ideas that seem practical and have obvious value.  We need to make a deliberate harvesting effort to collect ideas and concepts that are less developed.

·        TREATMENT:  How to develop ideas and shape them to fit an organization or any given situation. 

Futurist Joel Barker has warned us of the dangers of paradigms—Our minds are trained to find typical and predictable solutions to problems.  The tools of Lateral Thinking show how to get out of our paradigms, break out of our patterned way of thinking.  Lateral Thinking is a dependable, systematic approach to creative thinking.  (DuPont benchmarked every creativity process on the market for its Creativity Center.  Dr. David Tanner, then the head technical director of DuPont, said that the tools of Lateral Thinking are critical to DuPont.)

 “Our key professionals have embraced de Bono’s creative-thinking techniques.  The tools are having a profound impact on the quality of our thinking at IBM.”

(Jack Smulowitz, IBM Corporation)