Lateral thinking is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.
EDWARD DE BONOWe may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.
More Edward de Bono Quotes
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Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
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Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
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Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
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Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.
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Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.
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The vertical thinker says: ‘I know what I am looking for.’ The lateral thinker says: ‘I am looking but I won’t know what I am looking for until I have found it.’
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A characteristic of intuitive solutions and new ideas is that of being obvious once they are discovered.
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Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.
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Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway – we just disguise them as logic.
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There’s a danger in the internet and social media. The notion that information is enough, that more and more information is enough, that you don’t have to think, you just have to get more information – gets very dangerous.
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Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
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I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.
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The quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future.
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The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there.
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The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.
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