Lateral thinking

By Edward De Bono

PrincipalThe merchant and his daughter.

A merchant who owes money to a money lender agrees to settle the debt based upon the choice of two stones (one black, one white) from a moneybag. If his daughter chooses the white stone, the debt is canceled; if she picks the black stone, the moneylender gets the merchant's daughter. However, the moneylender "fixes" the outcome by putting two black stones in the bag. The daughter sees this and when she picks a stone out of the bag, immediately drops it onto the path full of other stones. She then points out that the stone she picked must have been the opposite color of the one remaining in the bag. Unwilling to be unveiled as dishonest, the moneylender must agree and cancel the debt.

Techniques of lateral thinking

1. The generation of alternatives-restructuring a pattern into a new pattern.


2. Challenging assumptionsReassessing challenging set efficient methods as being the best solution to a problem


3. Innovations-why do we do things the way?


4. Suspended Judgment-not discarding an idea immediately when we think it will not work.

The idea will survive longer and foster more ideas Other people might offer more ideas that their own judgment would have rejected Ideas that are judged to be wrong in the current frame of reference may survive long

enough to show that the frame of reference needs altering


5. Design-purpose view solutions from different angles

Rather than to be critical of ways that you don’t think will work, try to look from the angle that the new ideas approach the problem


6. Dominant ideas and crucial factors-standard approaches to problems solving are identified in order to highlight these could be vertical approaches to problem solving

Crucial factor is the one point that tethers or controls a solution, De Bono highlights the point that often crucial factors are assumptions rather than actual obstacles


7. Fractionalization-breaking down a problem into different pieces that you would not normally use in order to generate alternative ways of looking at a situation


8. The reversal method-method of creating new approaches

e.g. Going on a holiday, reversed- holiday coming to one


9. Brainstorming

Being in a group and going through the above processes together


10. Analogies

Analogies are used to jumpstart inspiration when peoples creativity is low, promotes thinking in what seems an odd way, but gets the creative juices flowing.


11. Choice of entry point and attention area

Entry point refers to the part of the problem where we approach it, while attention area is the part of the problem that we focus our main efforts upon


12. Random stimulation

Random stimulation is the addition of unrelated information in order to shakeup the original thought pattern that was being used in order to approach the problem. It is useful in creating a slightly different angle of viewing the problem.


13. The new word “po” provocative operation

A new word coined by De Bono to fit between the words yes and no so that one can hold off judgment of an idea for a short time longer while formulating possible ideas around the possibilities of this new idea. It’s an idea that can lead to an answer but not excatly could be the answer.


14. Description/Problem solving and Design

Description, two people describe a problem in two different ways, same problem just seems like two different problems.

Examples of lateral thinking There is a man who lives on the top floor of a very tall building. Every day he gets

the elevator down to the ground floor to leave the building to go to work. Upon returning from work though, he can only travel half of the distance up riding in the elevator and has to walk the rest of the way up unless it's raining! How can this be?

Mel Colly stared through the dirty soot-smeared window on the 26th floor of the office tower. Overcome with depression he slid the window open and jumped through it. After he landed he was completely unhurt. Since there was nothing to cushion his fall or slow his descent, how could he have survived?

There was a hotel where the visitors complained about the slow moving elevator and how long they had to wait for it to come. It became so severe that the manager was asked to do something about it. If you were the manager what would you suggest? (Picked up from the book Mediocre but Arrogant MBA)

Examples of lateral thinking The man is very, very short and can only reach halfway up the elevator buttons (assuming the

levels of the buttons designating floors increases from bottom to top). However, if it is raining then he will have his umbrella with him and can press the higher buttons using it. Alternatively, the man's daily job finishes in this very building halfway up, except when it's raining. Perhaps he's a security guard who makes rounds floor by floor in the morning and watches a security monitor in the afternoon, except when it's raining. It never said he takes the elevator before walking, just that he does both.

Mel Colly was so sick and tired of window washing, he opened the window and jumped inside. Alternatively, Mel's office was in another building, on the first floor, and he was looking at the 26th-floor window of another tower; "the window" in the second sentence then refers to that of Mel's office, not the 26th-floor one. Mel could also have had a balcony.

Most of us would come up with ideal answers like - call the elevator service center and ask them to send someone to fix it. Warn the visitors about it. Change the system. Lateral thinking applied, a consultant advised the hotel to fix mirrors next to the elevators. This would cause people to be busy looking at themselves in the mirror and adjusting their dress, hair and may be watching someone else on the sly... They would not feel the wait. This actually worked for the hotel. And they did not receive complaints anymore!!

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Lateral thinking