Lateral Thinking

By M. Allen Firester on behalf of IS68; Mr. Fralin, principal.

Italian Workman Wants a Job

• An Italian workman wants a job, but the foreman won't hire him until he passes a little math test.

• 'Here's your first question,' the foreman said. 'Without using numbers, represent the number 9.'

• 'Withouta numbers?' the Italian says, 'Datsa easy.' and he proceeds to draw three trees.

• 'What's this?' the boss asks.• 'Ave you gota no brain? Tree and tree and tree

makes a nine,' says the Italian.

• 'Fair enough,' says the boss. 'Here's your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99.'

• The Italian stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree . 'Ere you go.'

• The boss scratches his head and says, 'How on earth do you get that to represent 99?'

• 'Eacha of da trees is a dirty now. So, it's dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Datsa a 99.'

• The boss is getting worried that he's going to actually have to hire this Italian, so he says, 'All right, last question.

• Same rules again, but represent the number 100.'

• The Italian stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, 'Ere you go. One hundred.'

• The boss looks at the attempt. 'You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!'

• (You're going to love this one!!!)• The Italian leans forward and points to the

marks at the base of each tree and says, 'A little doga come along and shita by eacha tree. So now you gota dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, data makea one hundred. So, whenna I start?

Historical perspective:

• Though fictional the following demonstrates the power of lateral thinking: Witness the success of the cadet James T. Kirk (Later Enterprise Captain) in star fleet academy:

• Kirk had the distinction of being the only cadet ever to beat the "no-win" Kobayashi Maru scenario; he had secretly reprogrammed the simulation computer, making it possible to win and earning himself a commendation for original thinking. When asked how he was able to win against this no-win situation, he said, “I changed the rules.”

• Gauss showed indications of mathematical genius very early. His teacher gave the students an assignment to add up a series of 100 numbers. Instantly, Gauss said that he had completed the exercise (the story goes that he had figured that 100 numbers could be determined by the equation n(a+b)(1/2)=50(a+b) where n=100, a = the first digit in the sequence and b = the last digit in the sequence.)

Let me show you how he did it.

Suppose you wanted to sum up: 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 Notice that 5 + 8 = 13 Also 5 + 6 = 13. There

are 2 pairs of 13. 13 x 2 = 26. Would this be any different for the sum of

the digits 1 to 10? What is the sum? How many pairs? What is the total?

Is this just deductive or inductive reasoning?

Or was he thinking outside the box?

• Years ago everyone wanted to know why Chemical Bank was able to reconcile almost all of their accounts at the end of the day and avoid massive write-offs to their suspension account (saving millions). The answer was that at 3:00 pm daily, all of the people involved brought their coffee to the conference room for a brainstorming session. They found matches where there appeared to be none. This was the first instance I had seen first-hand of the power of lateral thinking.

• As Einstein reminds us, “Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.”

• He was, of course, alluding to problems that are unusual in nature or plaguing to society.

• There are many instances of scientists or social scientists who have had breakthroughs due to creative thinking.

De Bono identifies four critical factors associated with lateral

thinking:

• recognize dominant ideas that polarize the perception of a problem

• Searching for different ways of looking at things

• relaxation of rigid control of thinking and • use of chance to encourage other ideas.

Lateral thinking is our edge in the global marketplace.

• Dr. Charles Prather (Keynote speaker):• http://www.bottomlineinnovation.com/

500inn.htm• http://www.bottomlineinnovation.com/

out_of_the_box_video_hm1.wmv• http://www.bottomlineinnovation.com/

kai_creativity_hm1.wmv• Talks of “Agents of change vs agents of

stability.”

The rules for lateral thinking are that there are no rules.

Lateral thinking

• Is actually a form of divergent thinking, which is also known as creative thinking.

• Supports higher level cognitive skills like: predicting, hypothesizing, inferring, or

reconstructing.• In problem solving the use of lateral thinking

is often followed by convergent thinking that allows us to summarize our findings.

Lateral thinking supports:

• The workshop model• Accountable talk• Critical thinking• Process skills

Quotations• A. A. MILNE: • One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.• • ARTHUR KOESTLER: • Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same

individual.• • BEATRIX POTTER: • Thank goodness I never went to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.• • BUCKMINSTER FULLER: • When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the

problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.• • EDWARD DE BONO: • It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having

no ideas at all.• • MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: • Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Lateral thinking can start with what is already recognizable

• Visualizations, and pattern recognition may at times lead to intuitive inspiration.

• At some point, though, you need to step back to look at alternatives. (Could be a function of PO)

• Lateral thinking involves pattern-breaking, thinking outside the box and creative ways of looking at the situation.

• Sometimes a new method or new solution becomes apparent that is more efficient than the obvious.

• Divergent----> Many possible answers

Here is an exercise in lateral thinking:

• Three switches outside a windowless room are connected to three light bulbs inside the room. How can you determine which switch is connected to which bulb if you may enter the room only once?

• I’ll give you some time to discuss this with your group.

Possible Solution

• Switch one light on for a minute; turn it off and turn on another one.

• Go into the room and feel the off-bulbs. • The warm one is connected to the first switch

and the on-bulb is connected to the second switch.

Another one:

• A man is hanging from a rope in a locked room. Below him is a puddle of water. How did he hang himself?

• Do you need some clues?

Clues:

• There is no furniture. When he hung himself, the puddle was not there...

• Think about it with your group.

Possible solution:

• The puddle is all that is left of a large block of ice. The man stood on this in order to hang himself...

Here is a math problem--

• How can you divide 11 horses so that 1 person gets ½, another gets ¼ and the last person gets 1/6?

Possible solution--

• You can add a horse from your own stock. Then give the first person 6 horses, the second 3 horses and the third 2 horses. That makes 11 horses that are given out.

• You can now take your horse back. • Is there anything wrong with this thinking?• Does it solve the problem, though?

How could you divide a square into 4 equal pieces? Think of all the possibilities.

Materials supplied: Square paper, pencils,

rulers and scissors. Use the paper supplied to test your solutions.

Did you consider any of these?

Definition: Lateral Thinking (from: Infinite Innovations Ltd)

• Similar to Creative Thinking (also called divergent thinking). Seeking to solve problems by unorthodox or apparently illogical methods.

• "A set of systematic techniques used for changing concepts and perceptions and generating new ones“

• "Exploring multiple possibilities and approaches instead of pursuing a single approach." (Edward de Bono, originator of the phrase)

Why isn’t critical thinking a form of lateral thinking?

• Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the truth value of statements and seeking errors. Lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. A person would use lateral thinking when they want to move from one known idea to creating new ideas. It can also be put as, critical thinking is like a post-mortem while lateral thinking is like diagnosis.

When starting a new unit--

• If you ask many tantalizing and divergent questions in your classroom, your students are likely to model after your behavior for example, "What would have happened if Lincoln was shot in the first month of the war? Why did Lincoln only free the slaves in the rebel states? How did it feel to be a woman in the path of Sherman's army?"

Increasing wait time increases the probability that students will

think creatively• Research into wait-time for American

classrooms paints a distressing picture. Many teachers wait less than two seconds for the answer to each question and ask hundreds of questions per hour. These types of questions are generally recall questions demanding little thought.

Lateral Thinking often begins with brainstorming

• The four rules of brainstorming:• 1. all contributions are accepted without

judgment;• 2. the goal is a large number of ideas or

questions;• 3. building on other people's ideas is

encouraged;• 4. Far-out, unusual ideas are encouraged.

Try visual brainstorming

• In the 1500’s, Leonardo da Vinci employed both drawings and words to describe his incredible ideas and inventions. By using sketches with captions, his concepts became clear, exciting graphic presentations. And we think Lenny had it right.

Leonardo da Vinci's concept for a helicopterused both his inventive sketch and descriptive words.

In modern business this has led to blamestorming

Where a group of people gather to discuss what went wrong and who is to blame for a project's failure. Similar to the brainstorming rules, blamestorming requires vast flows of wild and exaggerated ideas with an initial emphasis on quantity rather than quality.

It's also legitimate that blame given by one participant can be built on by others. However, unlike brainstorming, blamestorming requires total criticism and judgment of ideas, and an idea's worth is dependent on the management level of the person giving it.

Other methods for divergent thinking

• Breaking components into sections for modular analysis

• Keeping a journal• Freewriting• Mind and subject mapping

Divergent thinking questions begin with these words or

phrases:• Imagine...• Suppose...• Predict...• If..., then...• How might...• Can you create...• What are some possible consequences...

Examples of divergent thinking questions:

Can you imagine ways that soccer typifies Mexican culture?Suppose that Caesar never returned to Rome from Gaul. Would the Empire have existed?What predictions can you make regarding the budget deficit if McCain had won?How might life in the year 2100 differ from today?The computer corrects spelling. Is it then unnecessary for third graders to take spelling tests?

Other possible activities:

• Students will create a salad to go with the reading of one of the Walter Dean Mayer’s novels. What salad would be appropriate and why? (does anyone think of macaroni salad or potato salad?)

• What kind of rock would be best for construction and why? What makes concrete so durable?

• If I were an animal that could possibly survive on Mars, what animal would I be and why?

• Why walls are a great way to allow students the latitude for exploring new concepts.

• We need to take historical events and relate them to today’s problems (How can we solve our immigration problem today?)

Some of these connections might at first seem “silly” but students

need to be freed from the ordinary in order to examine the

extraordinary. It is precisely for this reason that

DeBono devised the use PO

PO is a method by which you introduce:

• Random Entry• Provocation• Challenge

• Random Entry: Choose an object at random, or a noun from a dictionary, and associate that with the area you are thinking about.

• For example imagine you are thinking about how to improve Wikipedia. Choosing an object at random from an office you might see a fax machine. A fax machine transmits images over the phone to paper. Fax machines are becoming rare. People send faxes directly to known phone numbers. Perhaps this makes you think of providing ways to embed wiki articles in emails and other websites, as is done with youtube videos. Does it stimulate other Wikipedia ideas for you?

• Provocation: Declare the usual perception out of bounds, or provide some provocative alternative to the usual situation under consideration. Prefix the provocation with the term 'Po" to signal that the provocation is not a valid idea put up for judgment but a stimulus for new perception.

• Consider the statement “PO -Cars should have square wheels." When considered with critical thinking, this would be evaluated as a poor suggestion and dismissed as impractical.

• The lateral thinking treatment of the same statement would be to speculate where it leads.

• Humor is taken intentionally with lateral thinking. A person would imagine "as if" this were the case, and describe the effects or qualities.

• Someone might observe: square wheels would produce very predictable bumps. If bumps can be predicted, then suspension can be designed to compensate.

• This leads to the idea of active suspension. A sensor connected to suspension could examine the road surface ahead on cars with round wheels too. A car could have a sensor for determining when it was going to hit a bump that feeds back to suspension that would know to compensate.

• The initial "provocative" statement has been left behind, but it has also been used to indirectly generate the new and potentially more useful idea.

Here is another example:

• PO – Suppose we could control the way traffic lights change?

• Actually, this is being tested now in New York with special bus routes that have sensors to keep the lights green till the bus passes.

• In Charlotte, NC, the lights count down from 60 seconds to let you know how long you have before the traffic flows.

• Challenge: Simply challenge the way things have always been done or seen, or the way they are.

• This is done not to show there is anything wrong with the existing situation but simply to direct your perceptions to exploring outside the current area.

• For example you could challenge coffee cups being produced with a handle. There is nothing wrong with coffee cups having handles so the challenge is a direction to explore without defending the status quo. The reason for the handle seems to be that the cup is often too hot to hold directly. Perhaps coffee cups could be made with insulated finger grips, or there could be separate coffee cup holders similar to beer holders.

Can milk containers be square?

• They’ve just begun producing gallon milk containers that are square.

• People don’t like it or aren’t used to it but..• It saves a great deal of time and expense in

shipping.• It is a more efficient way to package.• Someone was definitely “thinking outside the

box.”

PO is used to alert people that you are about to make a somewhat

outrageous remark.PO can be used for:

• Provocation or Challenge• Random Input • Escape

Po: Provocation

• Four basic ways to create a provocation:• EXAGGERATION • REVERSAL • DISTORTION • WISHFUL THINKING

PO Provocation -examples

• PO - The bathtub is only half full• PO - The traffic lights never change color• PO - The angles of a triangle don’t total 180

degrees

PO: Random Input• Our thinking target is Ambulances. We want new ideas on

Ambulances.• I open the dictionary at random and stop at the first "noun

thing word" that I find.• Firth: Arm of sea; estuary. OK that's it!• Po statement: Ambulances po firth • If a firth is an arm of the sea that suggest something jutting

out. Could there be a couple of bicycles strapped to the sides of ambulances to get into difficult spots?

Po: Escape

• With ESCAPE we are developing the habit of asking: "Is it necessary to do things this way?“

• Example: Credit cards po benefit. • This is a chosen statement rather than random

one.• "Credit cards po benefit" means "instead of

seeing or designing a credit card around the concept of 'benefit' how else might we do things?

Explorative readings

• Teachers will read the Rosen Article and the Analysis Questions at the end. Which of these questions inspire critical thinking and which do you think might lead to creative or lateral thinking? Can you create another question that inspires creativity?

• Teachers should practice using PO when discussing this.

Problem solving is not just for math

• In design, a problem is any situation where you have an opportunity to make a difference, to make things better.

• Whenever you are thinking creatively and critically about ways to increase the quality of life (or to avoid a decrease in quality), you are actively involved in problem solving.

How else can we use problem solving and lateral thinking?

• Teaming• Interdisciplinary projects• Academy themes

Why do we need lateral thinking in America?

• Edison said, “Invention is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.”

• What would happen to our society if we could increase inspiration to 25% of the mix?

• Could we find a cure for cancer? • Could we create the first engine that will bring

us to space exploration beyond our solar system?

How can we give more than 100%?

• If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Is represented as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

• H-A-R-D-W-O- R- K

8+1+18+4+23+ 15+18+11 = 98%

• K-N-O-W-L-E- D-G-E

11+14+15+23+ 12+5+4+7+ 5 = 96%

• A-T-T-I-T-U- D-E

1+20+20+9+20+ 21+4+5 = 100%

But Thinking---

• T-H-I-N-K-I-N-G• 20 + 8 + 9 +14 + 11 + 9 + 14 + 7 = 92% and

doing this laterally, critically, sequentially or even globally, puts you over 100%