Lateral Thinking – The Thinking Method That Helps You Stay Creative
Modern society increasingly demands that people have creative abilities to adapt and solve the constantly arising problems in life and work. Lateral Thinking is an effective thinking method that helps practitioners become more astute and solve problems more easily.
To clearly understand the nature of this method and how to apply it to work and study, let’s explore it with 1Office in the following article!
I. Understanding Lateral Thinking
1. What is Lateral Thinking?
Lateral Thinking – indirect thinking (also known as non-linear thinking or peripheral thinking) is a way of solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, which cannot be solved by conventional logical thinking. This thinking method is often used to transform a known idea into new ones.
New ideas emerge when we challenge the initial assumptions of the problem. This means you can turn a known or widely popular idea into a new, more compelling one.
Lateral Thinking – indirect thinking, also known as non-linear thinking or peripheral thinking
When brainstorming new ideas or busy solving a problem, you will find it difficult to get an answer by relying solely on logical arguments.
Instead, you need to delve deeper into the problem by using peripheral thinking – Lateral Thinking. By doing so, you can discover the key when you think more broadly and are not constrained by the assumptions of the problem itself.
This term was first introduced by psychologist Edward de Bono. He is a world-renowned author, philosopher, leading expert in the field of creativity, and directly teaches thinking methods as a skill.
To better understand Lateral Thinking, let’s start with a story told by Edward de Bono himself to help people visualize this concept more easily:
The Judgment of Solomon is a story from the Hebrew Bible about how the Jewish King Solomon adjudicated a dispute between two mothers over a child. Both women claimed to be the child’s mother, with one of them obviously being an impostor. To resolve the issue, King Solomon ordered the child to be cut in half, with each woman receiving one half. Upon hearing this verdict, the real mother agreed to give up the child to the impostor to save her child’s life. Through this, the wise King Solomon identified the true mother by her reaction to the verdict.
This is considered a classic example to describe Lateral Thinking, a thinking method that helps solve problems through a creative approach that does not follow conventional logic.
This term was first introduced by psychologist Edward de Bono
In Vietnam, there is also a similar version of the story of the Judgment of Solomon:
An old woman who lost a chicken went mad, cursing her neighbors day after day. The whole neighborhood couldn’t stand it anymore and went to the mandarin’s court for a judgment. The mandarin allowed everyone to slap the troublemaker. Most people, thinking of neighborly affection and pitying the old woman for her loss, only slapped very lightly. However, the thief, already furious from being cursed, slapped very hard. He was immediately arrested for theft.
In the decades since the author introduced the concept of peripheral thinking, it has been recognized and frequently used in physics lectures, television programs, and brain-stimulating courses.
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2. When should you use peripheral thinking?
2.1 Problem Solving
You can use Lateral Thinking to find alternative ways when you need to identify and solve a problem and start thinking about it in a broader sense. Additionally, you can train your brain to become more creative and discover better solutions to known problems.
You can use Lateral Thinking to find alternative ways when you need to identify a problem
2.2 Finding New Solutions
By using techniques from Lateral Thinking, you can find new ways to improve yourself and your business. This way of thinking can help you achieve your goals.
Read more: Design Thinking – A Breakthrough Solution Mindset for Businesses!
2.3 Lateral Thinking is effective for inventions and innovations
Every inventor or creator sometimes needs to focus their creativity on the invention process, whether it’s a patentable invention or a mobile application, and sometimes they will also face difficulties.
The Lateral Thinking method helps thinkers be more proactive and confident in their thoughts. When solving an unknown problem, lateral thinking can help you find many new ideas.
3. What professions should use the lateral thinking method?
Lateral thinking is a useful skill for any job you end up doing, but there are some career paths where it is particularly helpful. Here are some examples of career choices for lateral thinkers:
3.1 Advertising
People in advertising should use this type of thinking to persuade their customers to buy products.
Using this way of thinking will help you come up with new, impressive, and distinctive advertising ideas that make customers always remember your brand.
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3.2 Marketing
The nature of the marketing profession is that marketers often have to think of new or creative ways to promote products and services, launch more effective new communication campaigns, and create new trends for products.
Lateral Thinking can be applied when doing work related to Marketing
The Lateral Thinking method will be very effective if you know how to use it to find new ideas for yourself.
Working in the media field, you may have to use these thinking skills to convey messages creatively.
Whether you are a journalist, a filmmaker, or a press release writer, this way of thinking is very useful for you.
II. Lateral Thinking – the key to creativity
It can be seen that, thanks to Lateral Thinking, humanity has made society more modern, with an increasing number of developed technology products being applied in people’s work and lives.
This also shows that creative thinking is very important for any individual today, whether in work, study, or daily life.
One of the important reasons the author encourages readers to learn and practice Lateral Thinking is its effectiveness in approaching and analyzing problems from multiple perspectives and, especially, in increasing creativity in solving difficult problems that logical thinking sometimes cannot easily explain.
Lateral Thinking is the golden key to creativity
Thanks to Lateral Thinking, we can prove and explain difficult problems. Once the correctness of the answer is proven, it becomes easier to analyze the logical sequence to solve that problem and further strengthen that answer.
It can be seen that the effort to create multiple approaches from various perspectives helps prevent problem-solving from being confined to specific thoughts, easily creating surprising effectiveness thanks to creativity. Not only that, practicing Lateral Thinking also brings many benefits such as:
- Generating new ideas
- Processing perceptual choices
- Problem-solving
- Re-evaluating old problems comprehensively
The most fundamental principle of lateral thinking is that any specific approach to any problem is just one of many other possible ways.
Lateral Thinking is concerned with exploring other ways by restructuring and rearranging available information, asking provocative questions about the validity of the problem or old methods. Therefore, the lateral thinking method is the key to creating breakthroughs and creativity in solving problems in a more multi-dimensional and flexible way.
The lateral thinking method is the key to creating breakthroughs and creativity
This method will bring you many benefits in life. Lateral thinking can be practiced and improved with the right understanding and consistent practice over a long period.
If you have difficulty creating innovative solutions, Lateral Thinking is an effective method to help you expand your mindset and start thinking differently and more interestingly about every problem to find breakthrough solutions.
Above is the basic information about the Lateral Thinking method. 1Office hopes this article has provided you with useful information to apply to your future work!
Additionally, if you are facing difficulties in work management or personnel recruitment, register for a free consultation at 1office.vn, and 1Office will help you resolve your challenges quickly!
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