Practise thinking in space and time. An alternative to Powers of 10 that encourages you to look at a situation in space and time. Helpful for getting a new perspective. The easiest way I know is to literally draw the boxes. Start with what you’re dealing with in the centre then start filling the rest out. Another tool from the TRIZ toolkit.

9 Windows

De Bono talks a lot about provocation as a means, for example, of deliberating provoking something impossible just to provide a new perspective. For example, when trying to design a car that’s better for passengers you might provoke with something like, what would a car look like that didn’t go anywhere. Of course, you probably need the car to go somewhere, but it might lead to an idea that the doors needn’t be at the side, that the roof might change height, or that you could plumb it in. It may lead nowhere. Then again, it may lead to something new and interesting in the next step.

In case you missed the previous posts, Fundamentals of Lateral Thinking:

You don’t have to be right at every step

Lateral thinking: 4. Lateral thinking changes perspective just to be provocative

I love the principle behind this — that you can get to something that works without having things that are possible and would work along the way.

A stickier way of saying a similar thing is:

There is nothing more dangerous than to leap a chasm in two jumps

Lateral thinking: 3. You don’t have to be right at every step

During lateral thinking labels don’t have to clearly be one thing or another, they can be flexible. The phablet is a reasonable recent example of how existing terms and definitions can constrain on your thinking.

Lateral thinking: 2. Labels are not collectors but signposts. They are not fixed

There’s a lot of mention of lateral thinking without a whole lot of knowledge about the what and the why of it. Very often it seems that it’s just brainstorming. Here’s a short set of some of the fundamentals of lateral thinking. In this one the point really is that lateral thinking doesn’t solve things by itself, but you need both lateral and vertical thinking at different times. And they are very hard to do together because they are quite different mindsets.

As I understand it, Lateral thinking is from Edward de Bono.

Sketchplanations tagged with lateral-thinking