Lateral Thinking

Albert Einstein famously said that “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.

So, what are tools available to us to go beyond our current levels of thinking and the sum total wisdom being used consciously (or subconsciously) at a given moment?

One such tool ‘Lateral Thinking’ was pioneered in 1967 by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, and writer. Bono said that the (usual) concept of LOGICAL thinking is SELECTION and this is brought about by the processes of ACCEPTANCE and REJECTION.

Now, we can easily see that the mind's usual REJECTION of ideas based on already known knowledge and wisdom would most often limit a mind to move around endlessly in a very limited domain.

The usual Logical Reasoning, it seems, has no access to “What the mind does not even know that it does not know”.

Bono explains that the concept of LATERAL thinking is INSIGHT RESTRUCTURING and this is brought about through the REARRANGEMENT OF INFORMATION.

REARRANGEMENT is the BASIS of LATERAL thinking and the mind is NOT trapped by its usual YES or NO to ideas.

Instead of saying "Yes" or "No", Bono invites us to say "Po"! The term PO is derived from Provocative operation. The concept allows us to continue thinking forward to a new place in an unencumbered fashion where new ideas may be continually produced.

So, as new ideas keep pouring in from diverse angles (in a typical brainstorming session) they are not evaluated immediately. Every idea is simply recorded without any judgments.

Then the process of evaluating the transcripts of the Brainstorming session at a later meeting is the first access to “breakthrough” insights into the problem being considered.