Lateral Thinking

by Edward de Bono

  1. They can create problems which do not really exist. Such problems are only created by particular divisions, polarizations, conceptualizations.

  2. They can act as traps or prisons which prevent a more useful arrangement of information.

  3. They can block by adequacy.

  This first aspect of lateral thinking is to become aware of the process and the need for it. The second aspect involves developing some skill in the use of lateral thinking.

  It is not much use treating lateral thinking as an abstract process. Nor is it much use treating it as something to do with creativity and hence desirable in a general sort of way. Nor is it much use accepting lateral thinking as being of use to some people at some time in some circumstances. Lateral thinking is a necessary part of thinking and it is everybody’s business. One needs to go further than awareness and appreciation and to actually practise it. Throughout this book different ways of prac tising lateral thinking have been suggested. In each case the idea has been to use a specific technique. In addition to such specific practice sessions one needs some general practice situations. In dealing with the general situations one can use the techniques learned elsewhere or one can develop for oneself deliberate habits of mind and deliberate ways of applying lateral thinking.

  It would be possible to become involved in some project in depth. In the course of working through such a project there might be opportunity to use lateral thinking. In fact the opportunity to do so would be very small for in a specialized project treated in depth the emphasis is on the collection of specialized knowledge or its application. This is a matter of vertical thinking. Lateral thinking is most used when knowledge is readily available and the emphasis is on the best use of that knowledge. It is far more useful to practise lateral thinking over a large number of small projects than to suppose that it is practised in the pursuit of a large project.

  There are three practical situations which encourage the use of lateral thinking.

  Description.

  Problem solving.

  Design.

  Description

  An object or a situation may be described by someone in a particular way and by someone else in a different way. There can be as many descriptions as there are points of view. Some descriptions may be more useful than others, some descriptions may be more complete than others. But there is no one description which is correct, leaving all the others to be wrong. That is why description is an easy way of showing how something can be looked at in different ways. It is also an easy way of practising the ability to generate alternative ways of looking at something. Furthermore when one learns to generate alternative points of view oneself one is ready to appreciate the validity of other people’s points of view.

  Description is a way of making visible the way one understands something — the way one explains that thing to oneself. By having to describe something one has to commit oneself temporarily to a particular point of view. This means that one has to generate a definite point of view instead of being satisfied with a vague awareness.

  The idea of this exercise is to train people to realize that there is more than one way of looking at a situation and to be able to generate alternative ways for themselves. For this reason the emphasis is not on the accuracy of the description but on the difference between descriptions and on the use of novel methods of description.

  The raw material which is to be described may be picture material. This could take the form of photographs or ready made pictures or the students could be asked to draw pictures themselves for the others to describe. Simple geometric outline shapes are a good way to start. One can move on from visual material to written material. With written material one is really redescribing something that has already been described. It may be a story, an account from a book or a newspaper article. Real life situations can be identified by name without describing them just as real life objects can be identified and then the full description is left to the students. For instance students could be asked to describe a harvesting machine or the parliamentary system. Acting as in charades could also be the object of description. Obviously there is no limit to what can be described.

  The descriptions may be verbal or written or even in picture form. Once they have been obtained the emphasis is on showing the different approaches. Students are encouraged to find still further approaches.

  Although one is not interested in finding the best possible description one still needs to bear in mind what is a useful description and what is not. The material to be described is not being used as a stimulus to set off ideas. The task is not to generate ideas which have something to do with the material but to des cribe that material. The best criterion of adequate description is as follows:

  ‘Suppose you had to describe this scene to someone who could not see it, how would you describe it?’

  One is not looking for the complete and pedantic description. A description which only conveys one aspect of the material may be very good if it does so vividly. Descriptions may be partial, complete or general.

  For instance in describing a geometric square the following descriptions may be offered:

  A figure which has four equal sides.

  A figure which has only four angles and all of them are right angles.

  A rectangle with all the sides being equal.

  If you walk north for two miles then turn sharply east and continue for two miles, then sharply south and continue for two more miles, then sharply west and continue for two more miles, the path of your walk looked at from an aeroplane would be a square.

  If you take a rectangle which is twice as long as it is broad, and cut it in half straight down the middle you would have two squares.

  If you put together two right-angled isosceles triangles, base to base, you would have a square.

  Some of the above descriptions are obviously very incomplete. Others are very roundabout.

  Description is certainly the easiest setting hi which to practise lateral thinking because there is always some result.

  Problem solving

  Like description problem solving is a format that has been used in the suggested practice sessions throughout this book. A problem is not just an artificially arranged difficulty that is only to be found in textbooks. A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants. Any question poses a problem. Generating and solving problems is the basis of forward thinking and progress. If description is a matter of looking back to see I what one has then problem solving is a matter of looking forward to see what one can get.

  In any problem there is a desired end point — something one wants to bring about What one wants to bring about may take a variety of forms:

  1. To resolve some difficulty (traffic congestion problem).

  2. To bring about something new (design an apple picking machine).

  3. To do away with something unsatisfactory (road accidents, starvation).

  All these are but different aspects of the same process which is to bring about a change in the state of affairs. For instance the traffic congestion problem could be phrased in three ways:

  1. To resolve the difficulty of traffic congestion.

  2. To design a road system which would have free traffic flow.

  3. To get rid of the frustration and delay of traffic congestion.

  Problems may be open ended or closed. Most of the problems used in this book are open ended problems. This is because it would be impossible to have the time or the facilities for trying out solutions to a variety of real life problems. With open ended problems one can only offer suggestions as to how the problem might be solved. Since these suggestions cannot actually be tried out to see if they work they have to be judged in some other way. Judgement is based on what one thinks would happen if the solution was actually tried out. It may be the teacher who makes the judgement or the other students. The emphasis, however, is not on judging the suggested solutions but on generating different approaches. Where possible
one acknowledges a suggestion and even elaborates it rather than reject it. The only time one has to enforce judgement is when the suggestions wander so far from the problem that one is no longer trying to solve it at all. Though a problem may in fact be solved by information generated in another context the purpose of this type of problem-solving practice is to try to solve the given problem.

  With closed problems there is a definite answer. The solution either works or it does not There may be only one solution but more often there are alternative solutions. Some of these solutions may be better than others but for this purpose it is enough that the solution works. It is better to find a variety of solutions than to only find the best one. Closed problems have to be fairly simple because they have to be capable of being solved in a simple setting. Alternatively one has to have a notational system like mathematics which permits one to make one’s own model of the real world. It is better however to keep away from purely mathematical problems since these require knowledge of technique. There are various verbal problems which have verbal solutions. Some of them involve the simplest of mathematics but the solution really depends on the way the problem is looked at. (e.g. There was a line of ducks walking along and there were two ducks in front of a duck and two ducks behind a duck. How many ducks were there? The answer is three ducks). One can build up a stock of such problems by noting them down whenever one comes across them. It is very important that none of the problems depends on verbal tricks for the students must not be given the impression that the teacher is out to trick them by means of puns and so on.

  A useful type of problem is the artificial mechanical problem of the closed type. Such problems deal with actual objects, for instance how to get a long ladder through a short room. It is possible to generate such problems deliberately by taking a simple straightforward activity and then making a problem of it by severely limiting the starting position. For instance the problem might be: ‘How would you empty a glass of water if you are not allowed to lift it off the table?’ Another such problem might be: ‘How could you carry three pints of water in a newspaper?’ When using this type of problem one must be extremely careful in defining the starting position. One cannot go back afterwards and say that something was assumed or taken for granted. For instance if you ask students to cut a postcard into a certain shape then you cannot say: ‘But I did not say you could fold the card’, or ‘It was assumed you could not fold the card otherwise it would be too easy.’ This point is important because if you tell students to make assumptions and presume boundaries in their problem solving then you are going directly against the purpose of lateral thinking which challenges the limiting effect of such assumptions.

  Many of these artificial closed problems may seem rather trivial. But this does not matter for the processes used in solving such problems can be isolated and transferred to other problems. The idea is to develop a repertoire of problem solving processes.

  There is a third type of problem which can be used in the classroom situation but it involves the teacher doing some home work. The idea is to put forward problems that have already been solved but to withhold the solution. The teacher has to imagine how the problem might have been stated before the solution was found. The situations must of course be ones with which the students are not familiar. For instance students might be asked: ‘How would you make plastic buckets or plastic tubing?’ The teacher who would know about moulds, vacuum forming, extrusion etc would encourage suggestions and give the answer at the end. It is sometimes as well to ask if anyone already knows the answer because if so he can be told to keep quiet or to explain the answer himself at the end. If the students each write out their own suggestions there is no danger of the problem being spoiled by someone who knows the answer. This sort of problem can be I generated by using one’s imagination, by reading magazines (science, technology etc) or by wandering around exhibitions. There is no harm in reinventing things that have already been invented. It is very good practice.

  Design

  Design is really a special case of problem solving. One wants to bring about a desired state of affairs. Occasionally one wants to remedy some fault but more usually one wants to bring about something new. For that reason design is more open ended than problem solving. It requires more creativity. It is not so much a matter of linking up a clearly defined objective with a clearly defined starting position (as in problem solving) but more a matter of starting out from a general position in the direction of a general objective.

  A design does not have to be a drawing but for the practice of lateral thinking it is much more useful if the design always takes the form of a drawing. It does not matter how good the drawing is so long as there is an attempt to give a visual description of what is meant.

  Explanatory notes may be added to the drawing but they must be brief. The advantage of a drawing is that there is far more commitment than with a verbal explanation. Words can be very general but a line has to be put in a definite place. For instance in the design of a potato peeling machine it would be easy to say, ‘The potatoes go in there and then they get washed.’ But when this is described visually one can get the effect shown on p. 250. The designer wanted to use a bucket of water to wash the potatoes and the best way to fit the bucket into his machine was by turning it on its side — so the water level had to be turned on its side as well. This beautiful cliché use of the bucket of water would never have been apparent in a purely verbal description.

  Comparison

  The first purpose of the design exercise is to show that there are alternative ways of carrying out some function. A single designer will only be able to see one or perhaps a few alternative ways of doing something. But with a large number of designers there will be a large number of alternative approaches. Thus by simply exposing any single designer to the efforts of the others one shows how it is possible to look at things in different ways. The object of the design session is not to teach design but to teach lateral thinking — to teach the ability to generate alternative ways of looking at something.

  In practice some general design theme is given to the class (apple picking machine, cart to go over rough ground, potato peeling machine, cup that does not spill, redesigning the human body, redesigning a sausage, redesigning an umbrella, a machine to cut hair etc). The students are asked to come up with designs for the particular design task set. To make comparison easier it is best to only set one design project rather than let the students select their own from a list. The individual designs are then collected and compared.

  The comparisons may refer to the whole design (e.g. picking the apples off a tree as compared to shaking the tree) or to some particular function (e.g. grabbing the apples with a mechanical hand as compared to sucking them through a hole).

  Cliché units

  In examining the submitted designs one very quickly becomes aware of cliché units. Cliché units are standard ways of doing something that are borrowed entire from another setting. For instance a bucket and water to wash potatoes in is a cliché unit. The second purpose of the design exercise is to point out these standard ways of doing things and to show how they may not be the best way.

  In pointing out the cliché units one does not judge them. Certainly one does not condemn them for being cliché units. In the design process one has to go through cliché units before moving on to something more appropriate. One merely points out the cliché unit and encourages the designer to go further.

  The entire design may be a cliché unit. Thus when children were asked to design a cart to go over rough ground one boy drew a warlike tank complete with cannon, machine guns and rocket missiles. Such entire cliché units are borrowed directly from films, television, comics, encyclopedias etc.

  More often the cliché unit is only part of the design. In the apple picking machine project one student drew a large robot man picking apples off a tree. From the top of the robot’s head a wire went to a control switch in the hand of a normal man standing just behind. The large rob
ot was complete down to eyelashes. Another picture showed a boxlike structure with a plain disc for a head. This structure stood on two legs and it was equipped with two simple picking arms each of which had five fingers. Another design had done away with the legs and converted the dislike head into a dial with a pointer showing ‘fast… faster… stop’; but the two arms with five fingers were retained. A further design did away with the head but kept the arms. Finally a very sophisticated design showed a small mobile wheeled car with a long arm that stretched out to the apples. At the end of the arm was a complete hand with five fingers. One might have supposed this was just a neat way of indicating a picking function but there was a black hole in the middle of the hand and an explanatory note, ‘Apples are sucked through this hole.’ In this series cliché units ranged from the complete duplicate man to the hand with five useless fingers.

  As suggested above one may have to pass through cliché units in the course of the design process. The cliché units may be handled in the following ways (among others).

  1. Trimming and splitting.

  A complete cliché unit is taken and then the inessentials are trimmed away much as one might trim a rosebush. For instance in a sophisticated design for a potato peeling machine one designer wanted to go further and fry the potatoes to make chips. So he included a frying pan complete with handle. Since the potatoes were mechanically transported into and out of the pan the handle was obviously superfluous.

  Through repeated trimming one gradually narrows down the cliché unit to that part which is really necessary. (This is the whole purpose of that branch of. engineering known as Value Engineering.) Trimming may be a gradual process with a small amount removed each time or it may involve large slashes. For instance from the cliché unit of a tank one may slash off all the warlike function and keep only the caterpillar track. Where the jump is very large it may be more a matter of splitting a cliché unit than trimming it. Trimming and splitting are concept breaking procedures and being able to use them is a process of lateral thinking — the escape from rigid patterns.