There once was a man who was a merchant and father of a teenage daughter. Through a series of mishaps, he found himself unable to pay his debt to a money lender. The money lender proposed a bargain: he would pick up two stones from the stone path, a black one and a white one, and put them in an empty money bag. He would ask the merchant’s daughter to draw out one of the stones. If she drew the white stone, her family’s debt would be canceled, but if she drew the black stone, she would become the money lender’s wife. The merchant and his daughter were appalled, but since the alternative was to be thrown in jail, they reluctantly agreed.
Then a curious thing happened. Watching the money lender closely, the woman observed that he picked up two black stones and placed them in the bag, rather than one black one and one white one. He had rigged the game to guarantee the outcome.
What would she do? Expose the money lender as a cheat? Refuse to draw a stone and be thrown in jail? Draw a black stone to save her father and sacrifice herself?
Instead, the clever young woman drew out one stone and then clumsily fumbled it to the ground where it was lost among the other stones on the path. She apologized for her clumsiness and said, the color of the stone left in the bag, black or white, would indicate that she had chosen the opposite. The money lender was furious, because he knew the remaining stone was black. He had no choice but to follow through on his word and cancel the debt.
Author Edward de Bono uses this story to illustrate the concept of Lateral Thinking in his book by the same name. He describes lateral thinking as the process of imagining creative solutions rather than solving problems logically.
Lateral thinking leads to simple, unconventional ideas that seem obvious only after they are thought of, de Bone says. It stands in contrast to vertical thinking, which is the more conventional, deductive thought process.
According to the author, vertical thinking is “high-probability, straight-ahead” thinking, whereas lateral thinking “low-probability, sideways” thinking. “Since Aristotle, logical thinking has been exalted as the one effective way in which to use the mind. Yet the very elusiveness of new ideas indicates that they do not necessarily come about as a result of logical thought processes. Some people are aware of another sort of thinking, which is most easily recognized when it leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of.”
Lateral thinking encourages greater flexibility of mind and consideration of problems from many different perspectives. “Everyone has come across the sort of problem that seems impossible to solve until suddenly a surprisingly simple solution is revealed,” de Bono says. “Once it has been thought of, the solution is so obvious that one cannot understand why it was ever so difficult to find. This sort of problem may indeed be difficult to solve so long as vertical thinking is used.”
We can all appreciate simple, creative solutions when we encounter them. The internet screams about countless creative solutions in the form of simple hacks. “36 Amazing Hacks to Simplify Your Life!” and “31 Amazingly Useful Home Hacks that Actually Work!” and “22 Simple Life Hacks Everyone Should Know!” (Always accompanied by at least one exclamation point!)
In another example, de Bono cites an episode where two women each claimed to be the mother of an infant, and King Solomon had to identify a creative solution to determine which one was the legitimate mother. He ordered the child to be cut in half so each woman could receive half of the child. He suspected, however, that the real mother would rather see the other woman have the child than see it killed. And so, he concluded that the woman who proposed this alternative was, in fact, the real mother.
Lateral thinking often plays out in literature and movies in the form of the whodunit. Think of detectives like Sherlock Holmes (“Elementary, my dear Watson!”) or Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Contemporary movie franchises like the Oceans series of heist films (Oceans 11, etc) employ outlandishly creative contrivances to pull off a heist. The stories are like calisthenics for lateral-thinking screenwriters. In each story, the author builds backwards from the improbable conclusion to construct all the elements leading up to it. They begin at the end.
Clever choreography is the hallmark of magicians. The shell game. The card trick. The sleight of hand. They all rely on creative manipulation of the viewer’s perception.
Tricksters and scammers use lateral thinking to take advantage of people’s tendency to think linearly. They curate information in highly selective ways to distort what their victims see and manipulate them into believing what they are shown. Their victims may buy into the ruse one step at a time, seeing connections where none exist until – presto! – the scam is complete, and the victim is astonished, wondering how they could ever have been so naive.
In these situations, the shucksters count on people’s tendency to make assumptions about what they are seeing. If a magician is holding a ball in one hand and then covers it with a handkerchief in the other hand, the audience may assume that the ball is still under the handkerchief, naturally. But the skilled magician may remove the ball with the second hand while covering the first hand with the handkerchief. The ball is already gone, but the audience believes it is still there under the handkerchief.
Lateral thinkers challenge the assumptions that underpin the problem they’re facing. Rather than accepting the assumptions, they question their validity and consider opposite perspectives and alternative viewpoints. This could result in unique insights. For example, if a company’s shareholders tell the CEO that she needs to increase revenues, she may assume the company needs to attract more customers, or increase their marketing or raise their prices. She equates “doing more” with “more revenues.” But what if the best solution is not to do more but rather to do less? For instance, what if the CEO focused on reducing expenses? That wouldn’t lead to more revenues, per se, but would lead to more profits from existing revenues, which is what the shareholders are really demanding.
Lateral thinking was wonderfully summarized by Apple Computer in the 1990s when they were trying to take market share from IBM and other computer manufacturers running on the dominant Windows operating systems. Apple wanted to differentiate itself from competitors that it viewed as too utilitarian and rigid. The company wanted to be perceived as the choice for creative individuals. IBM’s slogan was “Think.” So what did Apple choose for its slogan? “Think different.”