Lateral Thinking? System Creativity Tools

Strengthen your business with fresh new thinking—bring innovative solutions to life. Joel Barker has made the business case to create new paradigms. Lateral Thinking provides a flexible framework with systematic creativity tools—the “how to,” so you can.

De Bono divides thinking into two methods:

1. Lateral Thinking: unconventional thinking. Deliberately setting out to look at challenges from completely different angles to find great solutions that would otherwise remain hidden. Focused on “what could be.” Will yield multiple creative solutions from which to choose.

2. Vertical thinking: conventional, logical, critical and analytical thinking. Focused on “what is.” Will not yield creative solutions. Click here for our DATT tool kit if this is the kind of thinking that you need to strengthen.

Lateral Thinking is Powerful

DuPont benchmarked every creativity process on the market for its Creativity Center. Dr. David Tanner, former technical director of DuPont, says that “the de Bono Techniques were the most useful” to DuPont. For example, an employee’s suggestion — the reengineering of a manufacturing process for Kevlar® — eliminated nine steps in the process, leading to savings of $30 million as a result of using Lateral Thinking™ techniques.

The Lateral Thinking Process and Tools

When teams engage in Lateral Thinking they are practicing parallel thinking—everyone is using the same tool at the same time on the same challenge. This speeds up the process saving everyone time. Each person’s unique thinking on the challenge is included which ensures a stronger solution is implemented, supported and is well thought out.

Lateral Thinking training will equip your teams with a process and proven tools to lead and participate in productive creative thinking sessions. You will see a measurable increase in practical ideas that can be implemented and supported.

Lateral Thinking Process Checklist: Focus Tools: Planning tools to help prepare for creative and innovative thinking sessions.   Current thinking checklist — screen for areas of opportunity.   Creative hit list — work with one to make creativity an everyday activity.   Multiple focus statements — generate from many different angles to uncover where to focus for ideas.   Redefine the problem — identify many different problem definitions to help determine where to focus for ideas.   Design the creative session agenda — select focus statement/s, decide which tools to use, plan for timing.   Guidelines for a formal creative session. Idea Generating Tools: A robust menu guaranteed to help you find new solutions that will set you apart.   Alternatives: Top of the head, brain dump.   Concept Triangle/Fan: How to extract concepts from ideas to then select powerful / fresh / new concepts to generate more new ideas.   Random Entry: How to use unrelated input to open up new lines of thinking. Fresh ideas.   Provocation: How to move from a provocative statement to practical new ideas.   Challenge Why CBA?: How to constructively challenge the status quo to uncover practical new ideas. Idea Sorting Tool: A tool that enables teams to quickly organize their idea output into a framework for action.   Harvesting: How to manage your idea output for long term value. Select ideas to build on right away. Identify ideas to work on later. Expand your list of concepts for future consideration. Determine the nature of the ideas generated to help you move towards different kinds of ideas next time — break patterns. Idea Building Tools: Now it's time to work with one idea at a time. Build on an idea to see if it can be made viable. Very often articulated ideas haven't been explored in any detail and they get killed too early in the process — at the idea-generating step. Tremendous potential is discarded.   Treatment: Can the idea be made to work within real-life constraints? How can it be strengthened? Can it be tailored to work within resources available? What weaknesses need to be overcome?   Assessment: Checklists and assessment questions that take into consideration corporate alignment, risk, fit, power, etc. Implementation and Change Management Tools: Organizations have in place project management and change management methods that work very well. Our process likely overlaps with your internal assessment tools. You will want to incorporate your assessment tools and use your own project management method for implementation.

Lateral Thinking is Powerful

"By the end of this year we will have doubled our business since our creative thinking session with you, and we are 60% of the way to the goal. It's almost time to raise the bar!- Dan Weare, National Business Manager, Sears Canada

Lateral Thinking Tools are Perfect For:

• Groups in need of new thinking.

• Companies with an “innovation” initiative in need of tools that actually work.

• Executives feeling the heat. Same old, same old just isn't working anymore.

• Teams frustrated with old predicable ideas that keep surfacing in their creative thinking meetings.

• Professionals in the new idea development business — R&D, PD, marketing, advertising.

• Scientists and engineers who need systematic tools to break open their thinking.

• HR/OD professionals needing tools to facilitate ideation meetings.

• Proactive people that want to strengthen their Innovation Instinct™— their ability to generate, build on and implement valuable new ideas.