Creativity :: Lateral vs Vertical Thinking

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When trying to solve a problem, it is very important to consider alternate solutions instead of forging forward with the first decent idea. Picking one idea and proceeding until a solution is reached is called vertical thinking and this is the type of thinking that is most often taught in our schools. When thinking laterally, you continue to generate ideas even after a promising idea has been produced. A vertical thinker must always be moving usefully in some direction and must be correct at every step. A lateral thinker can wander in different directions to find creative solutions and often must be wrong in order to be right in the end. Lateral thinkers welcome and explore seemingly irrelevant facts or ideas, whereas vertical thinkers shut out all irrelevant data.

There are merits to both types of thinking. If you used only lateral thinking, you would be constantly experimenting and broadening and you would seldom finish anything. If you only used vertical thinking, you could go very far down the wrong path because you failed to find the correct path before starting out. A good compromise would be to use lateral thinking until you have decided on a solution and then switch to vertical thinking to implement that solution.

Lateral thinking is like humour: you only get it afterwards.A major force in British creative thinking is Edward de Bono. Although Maltese in origin, de Bono has doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge and is most famous for his addition of the term ‘lateral thinking’ to the English language in his 1967 book, ‘The Use of Lateral Thinking’. Since then, he has written around 40 books on creativity and thinking. This article is a whistle-stop tour of some of his more notable methods. In our world we are governed by rules and structure, and there is a great deal of time spent developing them. We generally learn in sequence, and organize in the same type of order as most everyone else – like filing things according to name, subject or date so our lives are less cluttered and stressful. With the digital age it has become easier to organize information and retrieve it at will. This is vertical thinking: analytical, developed, sequential, and following the path that others have left behind. There is nothing wrong with being a vertical thinker. They are the analysts of the world, the star student with the highest grades and they don’t make many mistakes. They are dependable, structured, and get the job done just as they are expected to do. They make the ideal employee.

Lateral thinking takes the indirect approach to solve problems. Although the reasoning may not be immediately obvious, and not obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic, it does work in a more indirect way.

Lateral thinkers are more disruptive in class, always asking questions and wanting to know as much they can about everything. To use an old and abused cliché, they think outside the box. They make a lot of mistakes, but that’s because they try so many different things. They don’t have to be right all the time because, as Thomas Edison once said, If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. Lateral thinkers don’t give up, and look for new ways to do things. They are the ones who start new companies, and take risks.

There is nothing wrong with being a lateral thinker. They are usually the ones with the highest IQ, although may never have completed school. They are the ones who constantly are trying new things. They are also the ones who are not dependable, have a hard time sitting still and completing a task, and teachers hate to have them in class.

The world needs both types of thinkers to progress – the ones who come up with the ideas, and the ones to implement them. There is nothing wrong with either group, but combining the two together makes for a fun and interesting ride!

Example of lateral thinking:

There is a girl who is to be gambled by her father against a heavy debt. If she draws a white pebble from a bag containing one white and one black pebble, the debt is cleared and she is freed. If, however, the black pebble is drawn out, she must go with the merchant. The dilemma is that she sees the merchant sneak two black pebbles into the bag, so what should she do? The vertical thinker considers all options and concludes that she should say what she has seen. The lateral thinker, however, thinks beyond this solution that, at best, leaves the girl with a 50% chance of freedom. If we think about the pebble that is left behind, which is black, all she has to do is pull out one pebble, and whilst keeping concealed, clumsily drop it where it cannot be found, then say ‘All we need to do is look at the pebble that is left.’

Lateral thinking is thus very much about standing back, looking at the big picture and understanding concepts. It also requires that you focus in on the parts that have perhaps been overlooked, challenging assumptions and seeking alternatives.

Six thinking hats

When working with other people, sometimes we want to give ideas, pass comment, and so on. The problem is that we do not have an easy way of saying ‘This is just an idea, please accept it as such.’ De Bono offers both a method of solving this problem and also six common situations where we might have need of such explanation of what we are about to say. He uses the principle of ‘hats’ so people can say things like, ‘With my red hat, it looks like…’. This also, of course, encourages people to deliberately use these six modes of thinking where otherwise they may be trapped by habitual use of only one. The six hats are:

· White hat: neutral information (think of purity).

· Red hat: emotions and hunches (think of warm fire).

· Black hat: judging and evaluating (think of the judge’s black robes).

· Yellow hat: optimism and positive views (think of sunshine).

· Green hat: ideas and creativity (think of vegetation growth).

· Blue hat: big picture and control (think of the sky above).

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