2 ways to Lateral thinking: Convergent and Divergent

One of my colleagues talked about lateral thinking of the mind.

What struck me was that aren’t we all lateral thinkers at some point in time? I believe it is only the severity of the need that drives us to lateral thinking.

Of course, there are people that are much better at innovating than others. A classic example would be improvisation in the face of adversity. You see it in the wild as well, monkeys fashioning twigs and scraps to use as tools to get to their food. The need here is to survive – which I am sure is severe enough for our not so evolved cousins to improvise. So, therefore is it safe to say that improvisation is evolution? And furthering this argument, saying that evolution comes from lateral thinking, which would effectively mean that species that are not able to improvise/adapt/evolve - think! - are going to be extinct? No wonder we call a dumb person – a dodo.

Extending this theory to races, we would see a totally different kind of lateral thinking happening; that of lateral thinking in face of social coercion. We already have seen it in history - converting to a particular religion because of coercion.

I am using a milder term for assault, murder, arson et al. Point being, civilizations have used brute force to bring people in line. Indeed, the engine behind the brute force has changed through ages. In the earlier times it was largely religion. Here the understanding was simple, convert to my religion; you get food, protection and salvation. Barter of goods was the fashion.

Some thought, dammit, I am not getting the right quality of the goods that I get in return for the quality that I am putting out! Why don’t I instead use the already circulating IOU’s written down on paper for exchanging? (Lateral thinker who must have introduced the first unrecorded financial meltdown in history)

This must have put in the idea of money in men’s minds. Then came industrialization and newer ways of making money were to be found, and out of this sprung forth the welfare state – socialism.

Later, capitalism took over. Though there were teething troubles with socialism for a long while. So a capitalist economy was brought forth only by thinking in an altogether new direction, one that did away with set norms and actually addressed the rotting issues facing men.

In this context, a bad example of lateral thinking would be dictatorship; Hitler and Mussolini were the poster boys of lateral thinking. Although, much credit could be given to these guys for the scientific advancements in industrial engineering that the world saw during the wars. Some of the manufacturing techniques introduced (time and motion study) et al have been phenomenally exquisite and are still used to this day; and perfected upon as well. All of it could be attributed to the stellar ability of mans mind to think in several different ways at one time.

In the new world, there is another buzz word doing the rounds called as design thinking. Talks about the way a product/concept/idea may function in the natural environment, that it is meant to function in, thereby designing it from the need basis than from, say, merely designers point of view. Isn’t this a subset of lateral thinking to speak of? I mean c’mon – stop jargonizing!

I think there are two ways to look at lateral thinking, convergent and divergent. Convergent thinking allows one to look at several aspects of a solution and encourage one to arrive at a single correct solution which, definitely is the practical way of looking a things. What I feel is, there is too much stress given to practicality, divergent thinking is where the pudding lies. And the proof is in eating. Ah-ha! I'm sure you were thinking about marrying divergence with practicality. Look at google, giving employees time to pursue their own ideas is an awesome example of thinking in a divergent manner all the while keeping practicality in your pocket thereby not damaging your productivity.

point being, Think lateral, but also divergent.