1970
1977
1990
Edward de Bono
Lateral Thinking
a textbook of creativity
ISBN: 987-0-14-193831-8
Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990
(Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990, )
p.5
It is emphasized that there is not antagonism between the two sorts of thinking. Both are necessary. Vertical thinking is immensely useful but one needs to enhance its usefulness by adding creativity and tempering its rigidity. Eventually this will done at school but until that time it may be necessary to do it at home.
This book is not intended to be read through at one sitting but worked through slowly over months or even years. For that reason many of the principles are repeated at intervals throughout the book in order to hold the subject together and prevent it fragmenting into mere techniques. In using the book, it is important to remember that practice is far more important than understanding the process.
p.6
The conflict method for changing ideas works well where the information can be evaluated in some objective manner. But the method does not work at all when the new information can only be evaluated through the old idea. Instead of being changed the old is strengthened and made ever more rigid.
p.6
The most effective way of changing ideas is not from outside by conflict but from within by the insight rearrangement of available information.
p.7
Insight, creativity and humour are so elusive because the mind is so efficien. The mind functions to create patterns out of its surroundings. Once the patterns are formed it becomes possible to recognize them, to react to them, to use them. As the patterns are used they become ever more firmly established.
p.7
Creativity also involves restructuring but with more emphasis on the escape from restricting patterns. Laternal thinking involves restructuring, escape and the provocation of new patterns.
p.7
In order to be able to use creativity one must rid it of this aura of mystique and regard it as a way of using the mind in a way of handling information. This is what lateral thinking is about.
p.7
New ideas are the stuff of change and progress in every field from science to art, from politics to personal happiness.
p.7
This leads to changes in attitude and approach; to looking in a different way at things which have always been looked at in the same way.
p.18
(pdf 18/211)
Code communication
Communication is the transfer of information. If you want someone to do something you could give him detailed instructions telling him exactly what to do. This would be accurate but it might take rather a long time. It would be much easier if you could simply say to him: Go ahead and carry out plan number 4. This simple sentence might replace pages of instruction. In the military world certain complex patterns of behaviour are coded in this manner so that one only has to specify the code number for the whole pattern of behaviour to be activated. It is the same with computers: much used programmes are stored under a particular heading and one can call them into use by just specifying that heading. When you go into, a library to get a book you could describe in detail the book you wanted, giving author, title, subject, general outline etc. Instead of all that you could just give the code number from the catalogue.
Communication by code can only work if there are preset patterns. These patterns which may be very complex are worked out before hand and are available under some code heading. Instead of transferring all the required information you just transfer the code heading. That code heading acts as a trigger word which identifies and calls up the pattern you want. This trigger word can be an actual code heading such as the name of a film or it can be some part of the information which acts to call up the rest. For instance one might not remember a film by its name but if one were to say: Do you remember the film with Julie Andrews as a governess looking after some children in Austria? The rest of the film might be easily brought to mind.
Language itself is the most obvious code system with the words themselves as triggers. There are great advantages in any code system.
p.21
(pdf 21/211)
The limited attention span means that only part of the memory surface can be activated at any one time. Which part of the [memory] surface comes to be activated depends on what is being presented to the [memory] surface at the moment, what has been presented to the [memory] surface just before, and the state of the [memory] surface (i.e. what has happened to the surface in the past).
p.22
(pdf 22/211)
The most easily activated area or pattern is the most familiar one, the one which has been encountered most often the which has left most trace on the memory surface. And because a familiar pattern tends to be used, it becomes ever more familiar. In this way, the mind builds up that stock of preset patterns which are the basis of code communication.
p.24
There comes a time when one cannot proceed further without restructuring the pattern without breaking up the old pattern which has been so useful and arranging the old information in a new way.
The trouble with a self-maximizing system that must make sense at each moment is that the sequence of arrival information determines the way it is to be arranged.
p.25
As with the plastic pieces there is often an alternative way of arranging available information. This means that there can be switch over to another arrangement. Usually this switch over is sudden. If the switch over is temporary is gives rise to humour. If the switch over is permanent it gives rise to insight. It is interesting that the reaction to an insight solution is often laughter even when there is nothing funny about the solution itself.
pp.25-26
In each of these situations an expectation is generated by the way the information is put together. Then suddenly this expectation is thwarted but at once one sees that the unexpected development is another way of putting things together.
Humour and insight are characteristic of this type of information handling system. Both processes are difficult to bring about deliberately.
pp.29-34
Difference between lateral and vertical thinking 2
p.30
Vertical thinking moves only if there is a direction in which to move, lateral thinking moves in order to generate a direction.
With vertical thinking one moves in a clearly defined direction towards the solution of a problem. One uses some definite approach or some definite technique. With lateral thinking one moves for the sake of moving.
One does not have to be moving towards something, one may be moving away from something. It is the movement or change that matters. With lateral thinking one does not move in order to follow a direction but in order to generate one. With vertical thinking one designs an experiment to show some effect. With lateral thinking one designs an experiment in order to provide an opportunity to change one's ideas. With vertical thinking one must always be moving usefully in some direction. With lateral thinking one may play around without any purpose or direction. One may play around with experiments, with models, with notation, with ideas.
The movement and change the lateral thinking is not an end in itself but a way of bringing about repatterning.
p.30
The vertical thinker says: “I know what I'm looking for.” The lateral thinker says: “I am looking but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.”
p.30
Vertical thinking is analytical, lateral thinking is provocative
One may consider three different attitude to the remark of a student who had come to the conclusion: “Ulysses was a hypocrite.”
1. “You are wrong, Ulysses was not a hypocrite.”
2. “How very interesting, tell me how you reached that conclusion.”
3. “very well. What happens next? How are you going to go forward from that idea?”
In order to be able to use provocative qualities of lateral thinking one must also be able to follow up with the selective qualities of vertical thinking.
p.31
Nevertheless the solution may still make sense in its own right without having to depend on the pathway by which it was reached.
p.31
It may also happen that once one has reached a particular point it becomes possible to construct a sound logical pathway back to the starting point.
([ It may also happen that once you have reached a particular stage it becomes possible to construct a sound logical pathway back to the starting zone. ])
p.31
It maybe necessary to be on the top of a mountain in order to find the best way up.
p.31
With vertical thinking one has to be correct at every step, with lateral thinking one does not have to be
The very essence of vertical thinking is that one must be right at each step. This is absolutely fundamental to the nature of vertical thinking. Logical thinking and mathematics would not function at all without this necessity. In lateral thinking however one does not have to be right at each step provided the conclusion is right. It is like building a bridge. The parts do not have to be self-supporting at every stage but when the last part is fitted into place the bridge suddenly becomes self-supporting.
([ do image search: diagram of an arch bridge ])
([ do image search: how to construct an arch bridge ])
p.32
With vertical thinking one uses the negative in order to block of certain pathways. With lateral thinking there is no negative
There are times when it it may be necessary to be wrong in order to be right at the end. This can happen when one is judged wrong according to the current frame of reference and then is found to be right when the frame of reference itself gets, changed. Even if the frame of reference is not changed it may still be useful to go through a wrong area in order to reach a position from which the right pathway can be seen. This is shown diagrammatically below. The final pathway cannot of course pass through the wrong area but having gone through this area one may more easily discover the correct pathway.
pp.32-33
With vertical thinking categories, classifications and labels are fixed, with lateral thinking they are not
With vertical thinking categories, classifications and labels are useful only if they are consistent, for vertical thinking depends on identifying something as a member of some class or excluding it from that class. If something is given a label or put into a class it is supposed to stay there. With lateral thinking labels may change as something is looked at now in one way and now in another. Classifications and categories are not fixed pigeonholes to aid identification but signposts to help movement with lateral thinking the labels are not permanently attached but are used for temporary convenience.
Vertical thinking depends heavily on the rigidity of definitions just as mathematics does on the unalterable meaning of a symbol once this has been allocated. Just as a sudden change of meaning is the basis of humour so an equal fluidity of meaning is useful for the stimulation of lateral thinking.
p.35
Lateral thinking is a description of a process not of a result.
pp.35-36
It is always possible to describe a logical pathway in hindsight once a solution is spelled out. But being able to reach that solution by means of this hindsight pathway is another matter. One can demonstrate this quite simply by offering certain problems which are difficult to solve and yet when solved, the solution is obvious. In such cases, it is impossible to suppose that what make the problem difficult was lack of the elementary logic required.
It is characteristic of insight solutions and new ideas that they should be obvious after they have been found. In itself, this shows how insufficient logic is in practice, otherwise such simple solutions must have occurred much earlier.
p.36
In practical terms however, it is quite obvious that the hindsight demonstration of a logical pathway does not indicate that the solution would have been reached in this way.
p.37
Lateral thinking is more concerned with concept breaking, with provocation and disruption in order to allow the mind to restructure patterns.
p.37
There is nothing mysterious about lateral thinking. It is a way of handling information.
p.37
Lateral thinking and vertical thinking are complementary
Some people are unhappy about lateral thinking because they feel that it threatens the validity of vertical thinking. This is not so at all. The two processes are complementary not antagonistic. Lateral thinking is useful for generating ideas and approaches and vertical thinking is useful for developing them. Lateral thinking enhances the effectiveness of vertical thinking by offering it more to select from. Vertical thinking mutiplies the effectiveness of lateral thinking by making good use of the ideas generated.
Most of the time one might be using vertical thinking but when one needs to use lateral thinking then no amount of excellence in vertical thinking will do instead. To persist with vertical thinking when one should be using lateral thinking is dangerous. One needs some skill in both types of thinking.
Lateral thinking is like the reverse gear in the car. One would never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time. On the other hand one needs to have it to know how to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.
p.38
A particular way of looking at things may have developed gradually.
p.38
A pattern may develop in a particular way because it was derived from the combination of two other patterns but had all the information been available at one time the pattern would have been quite different.
p.38
A pattern may persist because it is useful and adequate and yet a restructuring of the pattern could give rise to something very much better.
p.39
Had all four pieces been presented at once this final pattern is the one that would have resulted, but owing to the sequence of arrival of the pieces it was the other pattern that developed.
p.39
Lateral thinking is both on attitude and a method of using information
The lateral thinking attitude regards any particular way of looking at things as useful but not unique or absolute. That is to say one acknowledges the usefulness of a pattern but instead of regarding it as inevitable one regards it as only one way of putting things together. This attitude challenges the assumption that what is a convenient pattern at the moment is the only possible pattern. This attitude tempers the arrogance of rigidity and dogma.
p.39
The lateral thinking attitude involves firstly a refusal to accept rigid patterns and secondly an attempt to put things together in different ways. With lateral thinking one is always trying to generate alternatives, to restructure patterns. It is not a matter of declaring the current pattern wrong or inadequate.
p.39
Lateral thinking is never a judgement.
p.39
One may be quite satisfied with the current pattern and yet try to generate alternative patterns. As far as lateral thinking is concerned the only thing that can be wrong with a pattern is the arrogant rigidty with which it is held.
p.40
Underlying them all are certain general principles. In lateral thinking information is used not for its own sake but for its effect. This way of using information involves looking forward not backward: one is not interested in the reasons which lead up to and justify the use of a piece of information but in the effects that might follow such a use. In vertical thinking one assembles informations into some structure, bridge or pathway. The information becomes part of the line of development. In lateral thinking, information is used to alter the structure but not to become part of it.
One might use a pin to hold two pieces of paper together or one might use a pin to jab into someone and make him jump.
p.40
For the same reason lateral thinking may use irrelevant information or it may involve suspending judgement and allowing an idea to develop instead of shutting it off by pronouncing it wrong.
pp.41-42
Problem solving
A problem does not have to be presented in a formal manner nor is it a matter for pencil and paper working out. A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants. It may be a matter of avoiding something, of getting something, of getting rid of something, of getting to know what one wants.
There are three-types of problem:
• The first type of problem requires for its solution more information or better techniques for handling information.
• The second type of problem requires no new information but a rearrangement of information already available: an insight restructuring.
• The third type of problem is the problem of no problem. One is blocked by the adequacy of the present arrangement from moving to a much better one. There is no point at which one can focus one's efforts to reach the better arrangement because one is not even aware that there is a better arrangement. The problem is to realize that ‘there is a problem’ to realize that ‘things can be improved’ and to define ‘this realization as a problem’.
The first type of problem can be solved by vertical thinking. The second and third type of problem require lateral thinking for their solution.
p.197
Many of these artificial closed problems may seem rather trivia. 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.
p.210
The Mechanism of Mind, Jonathan Cape, 1969, 1971, 1969
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