Lateral Thinking

by Edward de Bono

  It is important not to criticize actual mechanics. One designer of an apple picking machine suggested putting bits of metal in each of the apples and then using powerful magnets buried in the ground under each tree to pull the apples down. It would be easy to criticize this as follows:

  1. Just as much trouble to put bits of metal in each apple as to pick each one directly.

  2. The magnet would have to be very powerful indeed to pull the apples down from such a distance.

  3. The apples would be badly damaged on hitting the ground.

  4. Buried magnets would only be able to collect apples from one tree.

  These are all valid comments and one could make many more. But rather than criticizing in this manner one could say: ‘Here is someone who instead of going up to pick the apples hike everybody else wants to attract the apples to the ground. Instead of having to find the apples and then to pick them one by one he can get them all together and all at once.’ Both these are very valid points. The actual method for carrying out the function is obviously inefficient but it is better to let that be than to appear to criticize the concept of function by criticizing the way it is carried out. When that particular designer learns more about magnets he will find that they would not be much good. At the moment however they represent the only method he knows for carrying out ‘attraction from a distance’.

  In another design for a cart that would go over rough ground the designer suggested some sort of ‘smooth stuff’ that was sucked up by the cart from behind itself and then spread down in front of it. Thus the cart was always travelling over smooth stuff. There was even a reservoir for evening out the supply of the smooth stuff. It would be easy to criticize the idea as follows:

  1. What sort of ‘smooth stuff’ would fill in big hollows? One would need far too much.

  2. One could never suck back all that had been laid down and so the supply would run out after a few feet.

  3. The cart would have to move very slowly indeed.

  Such criticisms are easy but instead one would appreciate that the designer had got away from the usual approach of providing special wheels or other devices for going over rough ground and instead was trying to alter the ground itself. From such a concept could come the notion of a tracked vehicle which does actually lay down smooth stuff and pick it up again. There are also those military vehicles which have a roll of steel mesh or glass fibre matting on their backs and this is laid down ahead of the vehicle to make a road on which the vehicle then runs.

  Though an idea may seem silly in itself it can still lead to something useful. As shown in the diagram the smooth stuff idea though not a solution in itself might lead straight to the idea of a tracked vehicle. If one had rejected the smooth stuff idea then it might have been harder to get to the same point The attitude is not, ‘This won’t work, let’s throw it out’ but, ‘This is not going to work but what does it lead us to?’

  No one is silly for the sake of being silly no matter how it might appear to other people. There must be a reason why something made sense to the person who drew it at the moment when it was drawn. What it appears to other people is not so important if one is trying to encourage lateral thinking. In any case whatever the reason behind a design and however silly it may be it can still be a most useful stimulus to further ideas.

  Assumptions

  In the design process there is a tendency to use ‘complete units’. This means that when one borrows a unit from somewhere else in order to carry out some special function that unit is used ‘complete’. Thus a mechanical arm to pick apples will have five fingers because the human arm has that number. In an attempt to break up such complete units and isolate what is really required one can question the assumption behind them: ‘Why does a hand need five fingers to pick apples?’

  One may also question assumptions that seem to be basic to the design itself.

  Why do we have to pick the apples off the trees?

  Why do trees have to be that shape?

  Why does the arm have to go up and down with every apple it picks?

  Some of the points challenged could easily have been taken for granted. By challenging them one can open up new ideas. For instance one could shake apples from trees instead of picking them. In California, they are experimenting with growing trees in a special way which would make it possible to pick the fruit more easily. The arm does not need to go up and down with each apple; the apples could be dropped into a chute or container.

  The ‘why’ technique can be applied to any part of the design project To begin with the teacher would apply it after discussing the designs. The students could also apply it to their own designs or those of others. As usual the purpose of the ‘why’ technique is not to try and justify something but to see what happens when one challenges the uniqueness of a particular way of doing things.

  Summary

  The design process is a convenient format for developing the idea of lateral thinking. The emphasis is on the different ways of doing things, the different ways of looking at things and the escape from cliché concepts, the challenging of assumptions. Critical evaluation is temporarily suspended in order to develop a generative frame of mind in which flexibility and variety can be used with confidence. For the design session to work it is essential that the person running it understands the purpose of the session. It is not practice in design but practice in lateral thinking.

  Dominant ideas and crucial factors 12

  There is nothing vague about a geometrical shape. As a situation it is very definite — one knows what one is looking at Most situations however are much more vague than this. Most of the time one has a vague awareness of the situation and nothing more. With a definite geometrical shape it is easy to think of alternative ways of dividing it up and alternative ways of putting the pieces together again. It is much more difficult to do this if there is only a vague awareness of the situation.

  Everyone is confident that they know what they are talking about, reading about or writing about but if you ask them to pick out the dominant idea there is difficulty in doing so. It is difficult to convert a vague awareness into a definite statement. The statement is either too long and complicated or else it leaves out too much. Sometimes the different aspects of the subject do not hang together to give a single theme.

  Unless one can convert a vague awareness to a definite pattern it is extremely difficult to generate alternative patterns, alternative ways of looking at the situation. In a defining situation one picks out the dominant idea not in order to be frozen by that idea but in order to be able to generate alternative ideas.

  Unless one can pick out the dominant idea one is going to be dominated by it. Whatever way one tries to look at the situation is likely to be dominated by the ever present but undefined dominant idea. One of the main purposes of picking out the dominant idea is to be able to escape from it. One can more easily escape from something definite than from something vague. Liberation from rigid patterns and the generation of alternative patterns are the aims of lateral thinking. Both processes are made much easier if one can pick out the dominant idea.

  If one cannot pick out the dominant idea then any alternatives one generates are likely to be imprisoned within that vague general idea. The diagram below shows how one may fed that one is generating an alternative point of view and yet this is still within the same framework of the dominant idea as the original point of view. It is only when one becomes aware of the framework that one can generate an alternative point of view outside of it.

  The dominant idea resides not in the situation itself but in the way it is looked at. Some people seem much better at picking out the dominant idea. Some people seem much better at crystallizing the situation in a single sentence. This may be because they can separate the main idea from the detail or it may be because they tend to have a simpler view of things. In order to be able to pick out the dominant idea one must make a conscious effort to do so and one needs practice.

  Different d
ominant ideas

  If students are asked to pick out the dominant idea from a newspaper article there are usually several different versions of what the dominant idea is. From an article on parks the following may be chosen as the dominant idea:

  The beauty of parkland.

  The value of parkland as a contrast to the city surroundings.

  The need to develop more parks.

  The difficulty of developing or preserving parks.

  Parkland as a relaxation or pleasure.

  The author is exercising the function of protest and parkland happens to be a suitable theme.

  The danger of the demands of urban growth.

  These are all different but related ideas. It is easy to say that some of the ideas are more truly dominant than others and yet to the person picking out the idea this idea has a valid dominance. It is not a matter of finding the dominant idea but of getting into the habit of trying to pick out the dominant idea. It is not a matter of analysing the situation but of seeing it clearly enough to be able to generate different points of view. It is not a matter of making use of the dominant idea but of identifying it in order to avoid it.

  In the design situation discussed in the preceding section the organizing effect of the dominant idea is quite obvious. The dominant idea is never actually stated but for different groups the idea is different. When children try to design a machine for picking apples the dominant idea is ‘reaching the apples’. The children think in personal terms which involve wanting one apple at a time and also the difficulty (for a small child) of actually reaching the apples. When the same design problem is given to an industrial engineering group the dominant idea is ‘effectiveness in commercial terms’. This is a wide concept which includes speed and cheapness of operation without any damage to the apples. From this point of view reaching the apples is not so much a problem as finding them, picking many at a time, bringing them to the ground without damage, and all this with a cheap machine that can easily be moved from tree to tree. In short the dominant problem for the engineers is ‘advantage over manual labour’ whereas for the children it is ‘getting the apples’.

  Hierarchy of dominant ideas

  As soon as one starts picking out dominant ideas one becomes aware that there are different degrees of comprehensiveness of dominant ideas. The dominant idea may include the whole subject or only one aspect of it. Thus from an article on crime one might pick out the following dominant ideas:

  Crime.

  Behaviour of people.

  Violence.

  Social structures and crime.

  The trend of crime.

  What can be done.

  Clearly ‘crime’ and ‘the behaviour of people’ are much wider ideas than ‘violence’ or ‘what can be done’ but all of them are valid dominant ideas. There is a hierarchy which extends upwards from the more specific ideas to the more general. In picking out the dominant idea it is not a matter of searching for the most general and most comprehensive idea for this may be so very wide that it is impossible to move outside it at all. In picking out a dominant idea it is not a matter of having to justify to someone else that the idea is the dominant idea which covers the whole situation and which cannot therefore be challenged. It is a matter of picking out an idea which seems (to oneself) to dominate the issue. For instance in the article on crime the dominant idea might have seemed to be ‘the uncertainty about the value of punishment’ or ‘the protection of the rights of a citizen even if he was a criminal’.

  Crucial factor

  A dominant idea is the organizing theme in a way of looking at a situation. It is often present but undefined and one tries to define it in order to escape from it. A crucial factor is some element of the situation which must always be included no matter how one looks at the situation. The crucial factor is a tethering point. Like a dominant idea a crucial factor can immobilize a situation and make it impossible to shift a point of view. Like a dominant idea a crucial factor may exert a powerful influence without ever being consciously recognized.

  The difference between a dominant idea and a crucial factor is shown diagrammatically below. The dominant idea organizes the situation. The crucial factor tethers it and though some mobility is allowed this is restricted.

  The purpose of isolating crucial factors is to examine them. Very often a crucial factor is an assumption — at least the ‘crucial’ nature of that factor is an assumption. Once the factor is isolated one challenges the necessity for it. If the factor is found not to be crucial then the tethering effect of that factor disappears and there is more freedom in structuring the situation in a different way. In the design of a machine for picking apples a crucial factor may have been ‘that the apples must not be damaged’ or ‘that only ripe apples were to be picked’. The necessity to include such crucial factors would restrict the way the problem could be looked at. For instance shaking the tree would not be a good idea.

  There may be one crucial factor, several crucial factors or none at all. Different people may choose different crucial factors. As with finding the dominant idea what matters is that one identifies what seems to be a crucial factor in one’s own view of the problem. Whether it really is crucial or whether other people would think so does not matter for one picks it out only to challenge its necessity.

  In looking for the dominant idea one wants to know, ‘why are we always looking at this thing in the same way?’ In looking for the crucial factor one wants to know, ‘what is holding us up, what is keeping us to this old approach?’

  In itself the search for dominant ideas or crucial factors is not a lateral thinking process at all. It is a necessary step which allows one to use lateral thinking more effectively. It is difficult to restructure a pattern unless one can see the pattern. It is difficult to loosen up a pattern unless one can identify the rigid points.

  Practice

  1. A newspaper article is read out to the students who then have to note down:

  (1). The dominant idea (or ideas).

  (2). The crucial factors.

  When the results have been collected the teacher goes through them and lists the different choices. A person making a particular choice may be asked to explain why he made that choice. This is not in order that the choice be justified or in order to show that it was not as good as other choices but in order to elaborate a particular point of view. There is no attempt to disqualify any of the choices or to rank them in order of excellence.

  If it is clear that some of the students have not grasped the point about dominant ideas and crucial factors then one concentrates on those answers which make the point most clearly. If none of them do then the teacher has to supply his own choice of dominant idea and crucial factor for the passage used.

  It is not a good idea to ask for choices of dominant ideas and then to list them on the blackboard as was suggested in previous sections. This is because a choice which seems to be very good will inhibit any further suggestions. It is far better to let people work out what seems dominant or crucial to them and then to show the variety of answers.

  2. Radio or tape recorder

  Instead of the teacher reading the passage out it could be a feature programme on the radio or something taped off the radio. The advantage of a tape recording is its repeatability.

  3. Instead of listening to a passage being read out the students can be given passages to study for themselves. This is rather different since there is more time to go over the piece, the inter pretation is not so determined by the way it has been read out and one can go back and reexamine what has been written to see if it supports a particular point of view.

  4. Discussion

  Two students are asked to debate a subject in front of the class. One can either choose students who declare they have opposite views on a particular subject or else ask the students to debate from opposite points of view whether or not they hold those views. The rest of the class listens to the debate and notes down the dominant idea and crucial factors in t
he discussion. In order to try and check the validity of these the other students can ask the debaters questions.

  5. Design project

  Either in the course of a design project or in discussing the results of a design project undertaken by others the students can try and pick out the dominant ideas and crucial factors. In this case they can examine the crucial factors to see whether they really are crucial and to see what would happen if one did not include them in the design. The same thing could be done with dominant ideas: the students first picking out the ideas and then seeing how they could escape them.

  Although it would be easy to combine this sort of practice session with the lateral thinking processes described before (and those to be described later) it is probably better not to do so. If one were to combine the process of generating alternatives with the process of picking out the dominant idea then there is a tendency to pick out a dominant idea which fits nicely in with the alternative one can think of. The choice of dominant ideas and crucial factors soon becomes tailored to show how clever one is at avoiding them. For the moment it is enough to become skilled at finding dominant ideas and crucial factors.

  Fractionation 13

  The aim of lateral thinking is to look at things in different ways, to restructure patterns, to generate alternatives. The mere intention of generating alternatives is sometimes sufficient. Such an intention can make one pause and look around before proceeding too far with the obvious way of looking at the situation. As one looks around one may find that there are other alternatives waiting to be considered. At other times the mere intention of generating alternatives is not sufficient. Goodwill cannot by itself generate alternatives. One has to use some more practical method. For the same reason exhorting people to look for alternatives does have a certain usefulness (especially in tempering the arrogance of a unique point of view) but one also needs to develop ways of generating alternatives.