Thinking books · Creativity · Edward de Bono, 1967

Lateral Thinking — the big ideas

A case that generating ideas is a skill with methods, distinct from judging them.

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The big ideas

The mind forms patterns and then uses them, which makes it efficient and makes it very hard to see a situation a second way. Deliberate techniques exist because it will not happen by trying harder.

Provocation: making a deliberately unreasonable statement and asking what would have to be true, rather than evaluating it.

Challenging why something is done this way — with no complaint attached — is a generative move, not a critical one.

A low hit rate is expected. Most provocations lead nowhere, and that is the cost of the ones that do not.

Practise it — no need to have read it

Take a problem and state a deliberately impossible version: it costs nothing, it finishes today, the customer builds it. Ask what would have to be true.

A hint: Do not evaluate. Follow the answer back towards something possible.

Where it shows up in real life

• Stuck product problems
• Process redesign
• When every option is a variation of one idea

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.