We need both, vertical and lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is concerned with generating new approaches, and with the escape from old ones.

I started reading about creativity, thinking techniques, and lateral thinking, many years ago. These issues continue being as much important as they were when I started to be interested in them. Although they are quite different subjects, from others that I have been writing about, we can find a lot of information that could be very interesting for all of us. At that time, I was especially concerned with Edward De Bono’s books. Therefore, I would like to share with you a small part of his huge work. We shall try to see how it can fit into our lives.

De Bono gives the name of vertical thinking to our traditional, logical, way of thinking because we proceed, directly, from a state of information to another one, and there is continuity between different steps. Traditional education goes this way, and for many people it is the only valid way to think. De Bono considers vertical thinking is important, so he gives us many techniques for developing it on a conscious way. It is also known as convergent thinking.

It would be almost impossible to find an answer for the many of the problems we must solve, if we only use vertical logical thinking, says the author. Also, it would be difficult to find new ideas if we look to information in the same way we have always managed. Lateral thinking introduces discontinuity, or a change in direction. We may also refer to this type of thinking as divergent thinking or creative thinking.

Lateral thinking helps us to find an idea. Vertical thinking will be used to develop it.

When vertical thinking arrives to a dead end, and it doesn’t lead you anywhere, lateral thinking changes the approach so that vertical thinking can proceed again.

Rarely, does lateral thinking actually provide a solution by itself. Usually, it simply provides a new approach or rescues someone that has been blocked by a particular idea.

When lateral thinking casts doubt on a well-established idea or concept, the intention is not to make that idea unusable. We need to use the ideas we have, otherwise it would be impossible to proceed at all. What lateral thinking does is to open up the possibility of restructuring the idea in order to bring it up to date; looking other ways to work with that idea, to be able to find new approaches and ways to look at what we are working on. It is not so much a matter of creating chronic dissatisfaction with current ideas, but of creating the hope of restructuring them.

Once one has acquired the habit of lateral thinking, the actual use of it is not confined to formal occasions or techniques but mingles with the use of vertical thinking, naturally. However, before that stage can be reached, one does have to pay attention to the principles of lateral thinking and also develop some skill, through practice.

Lateral thinking is concerned with generating new approaches, and with the escape from old ones. It is not a method for decision or for action. Once the ideas have been generated, one has to look to see their usefulness before putting them into action. We can use the full rigor of vertical thinking to examine the ideas that have been generated by the use of lateral thinking.

Lateral thinking is not something that is to be used all the time. In practice, one might use lateral thinking some five percent of the time and vertical thinking the other ninety-five percent of the time. It will be determined by the issue you are working on and the nature of the situation. If you have to come up with a new product, or you cannot solve a problem with vertical thinking, then you should spend some time thinking laterally. But in the normal course of events, one might spend no more than three minutes a day thinking laterally about some problem. And that is really a small amount of time anyone can afford, especially when the reward can be huge.

As well as we may improve in our way to use vertical thinking, we are also able to learn about lateral thinking and its principles, as well as we practice some skills and techniques that will help us to employ a lateral approach when needed. When we learn how to face situations in a different way we become less inclined to be rigid, or arrogant, or dogmatic. We can use our ideas, or the ideas from others, differently, exploring them for what they are worth.

I invite you to start with me this new path, at least new for many of you. Someway, it is also different and innovative for me. I have read many books about thinking, creativity, and lateral thinking. However, it is the first time I write about these for other people. Hope we enjoy, learn very much, and find it to be useful for us.

Bibliography:

Edward de Bono: “Lateral Thinking for Management”, Penguin Books.

Edward de Bono: “The Use of Lateral Thinking”, Penguin Books.