Lateral Thinking

Once we recognize the limitations of sequential thinking in decision making and innovation we look to more open styles of thinking that better serve our needs.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral thinking uses information fluidly, it may be correct in some contexts and incorrect in others. Unbounded from the process of sequential reasoning, lateral thinking is more appropriate to todays business environment, where new cultures and technologies are spawning new ways of communicating the living with no direct connection to past cultures.
Vertical and lateral thinking are complementary – lateral thinking is best used for generating ideas and vertical thinking for selecting from within these ideas to reach a valid conclusion.
To gain the most value from each they should be applied exclusively.

Lateral thinking is closely related to insight, creativity and humor. Whilst all three processes have the same basis, lateral thinking is a more deliberate process. Creativity is more of a result, whereas lateral thinking is a process. In this way, lateral thinking can be seen as an ‘insight tool’.

Get Out of Your Way

Establishing new ideas and bringing old ideas up to date results in conflict between the new information and the old idea. For the new idea to be accepted, the old idea must be abandoned. This can be problematic for many people, who zealously guard their ideas as a personal power base.

Generating new ideas is a science, rather than a method of human knowledge. When we look at knowledge, we have tools to collect and store it, simulations and modeling for extending it and logic for refining it.

For new ideas to be accepted and old ideas let go we must be capable of objective evaluation. Unfortunately, humans are rarely objective – we all have our biases, past experiences, personal intuition and personal agendas.

New ideas must not be evaluated in context of the old idea. This tends to strengthen the old idea making it harder to supplant. The most effect means of changing ideas is not by external conflict, but through insightful analysis of all information pertaining to the new idea.

Insight is the only effective way of changing ideas when information cannot be evaluated objectively.

" Knowledge is about collecting information –
Wisdom is about applying that information"

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