Lateral Thinking
As with the reversal procedure one can deliberately turn away from what one would naturally pay attention to in order to see what happens if one paid attention to something else For instance in the tennis tournament problem one might have said, ‘I am trying to see how many matches there would have to be to produce one winner — instead of this let me see how many matches there would have to be to produce 110 losers.’ This reversal procedure can work very well if there is a definite natural focus of attention in the situation.
Another method is to list the different features of the situation and then to proceed methodically through this list paying attention to each feature in turn. The important point here is not to feel that some features are so trivial that they do not merit any attention. The difficulty is that in any situation one can pick out as many features as one likes since the features reside not in the situation but in the way it is looked at Suppose one was considering the problem of homework. One might list the following features for attention in rotation:
Necessity for doing it (optional or required).
Time in which to do it.
Essential to course or reinforcing.
Travel time to get home.
Place to do it at home.
What else might be done instead.
Competing television programmes.
Routine or occasional.
Ability of father or mother to help.
Fast workers and slow workers.
Is one interested in what is done or the amount of time spent doing it?
Frustration and annoyance of homework.
Homework as lessening the content or impact of schoolwork.
Suppose the problem was one of getting rid of weeds. The natural attention focus is the growth of weeds which leads to methods for getting rid of them. But no attention is paid to what happens after the weeds are gone or to what would happen if the weeds were to stay. Attention is on the weeds and getting rid of them. In a recent experiment some strips in a field were sprayed with the usual weedkiller and others left to grow weeds. It was found that the yield of crops from the unsprayed strips was in fact higher.
In a foot and mouth epidemic it is customary to burn the corpses of infected animals if the soil is not deep enough to bury them. But in the burning, currents of hot air rise and spread particles from the fire over a very wide area. It is possible that such particles might be infected with virus that has escaped the full heat of the fire and so the disease might tend to spread. Here the attention is on getting rid of the Infected animals not on the effect of the method used for getting rid of them.
A very useful drug in medicine was discovered when someone noticed that when the drag was being used for something quite different the patients always passed a lot of urine. Since this was not the purpose of the treatment no one paid any attention to it until someone suddenly realized that here was a useful drug which could make patients pass urine when this was the purpose of treatment.
Practice
1. Identify entry points
An article discussing a particular problem is read out or given to the students. They are asked to list possible entry points for tackling the problem. They are also asked to define the entry point used by the writer of the article. Fox instance in an article on world hunger the writer might have chosen the wastage of food in some countries as his entry point, or he ought have chosen overpopulation or inefficient agriculture. From the results the teacher fists the possible entry points that have been suggested and adds other ones.
2. Entry points for assorted problems
A list of problems is written up on the blackboard and the students are asked in open class to volunteer different entry points for each of the problems. Each student offering a suggestion is asked to elaborate it briefly.
Possible problems might include:.
The making of synthetic foods.
The acceptance of synthetic foods.
A better design for a sausage.
The problem of stray dogs.
An easy method for cleaning windows.
3. Same problem, different entry points
This could be done by individuals or as a group activity. The same problem is set for all the groups but each group is given a different entry point At the end a spokesman for each group discusses how they used the entry point in each group. The point to watch here is that the group really does use the entry point There is a temptation to consider the problem in the obvious way and then just to connect up the entry point with this obvious way.
Suggested problem:
A method for keeping rain off one while one is walking in the street.
Suggested points of entry:
Bother of having to carry an umbrella.
Awkwardness of umbrellas when several people are using them.
Why go out in the rain?
Why does getting wet matter?
4. Omitted information (story)
In telling a story one normally leaves out all the information which is not essential for the development of the story. But if one wants to examine the situation itself rather than the way it has been described by someone else then one has to try and put that information back. One takes a story which may come from a newspaper or may be a very well-known story. In open class the students are asked for suggestions as to what has been left out e.g. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.
Was it on the way up or on the way back?
Was Jill hurt?
Why did Jill fall down anyway?
Why did Jack fall down?
Why were they going uphill to collect water?
5. Omitted information (picture)
Here a photograph or picture is used instead of a story. One student examines the picture and describes it to the classroom. Then each of the students draws a simple version of what he thinks the described picture looks like. From the nature of these drawings one can see the information that was omitted in the description of the picture. Another way of doing it is for a student to describe the picture as before and for the rest of the students to ask questions. Whenever a question can be answered from the picture then the student describing it could not have been paying attention to that part of the picture.
6. Further information
A picture is shown to the whole classroom. Each student writes down the information that he can get from that picture. At the end the results are collected and compared. The comparison between the person who extracts the most information and the person who extracts the least demonstrates how limited an area of attention may be.
7. Checklist
A problem is given and the students are asked to list all the different features through which they would like to rotate attention. This can be done in open class on a volunteer basis or by individual students with comparison of the lists at the end.
Suggested problems might include:
Alarm clocks that fail to wake one up.
Design for a bathtub.
Putting up a washing line.
Deciding where to build an airport.
Reducing noise from motorcycles and lorries.
8. Detective stories
With most detective stories mere is difficulty in finding the criminal because certain factors are left out of consideration or the wrong entry point is chosen. The writer of a good detective story tries to bring about both these mistakes. The teacher devises a short detective story which contains enough clues to indicate who the criminal might be. The story is men read out to the class who each have to decide for themselves who the criminal is and why. The students should then be asked to write their own detective stories on these lines. These stories in turn are read out to the class. For each story there is an assessment of how many students reach the right conclusion. The author of the story may be called upon to show how he has included enough clues to indicate the criminal.
Summary
Because of the natur
e of the self-maximizing memory system of the mind the entry point for considering a situation or a problem can make a big difference to the way it is structured. Usually the obvious entry point is chosen. Such an entry point is itself determined by the established pattern and so leads back to this. There is no way of telling which entry point is going to be best so one is usually content with the most obvious one. It is assumed that the choice of entry point does not matter since one will always arrive at the same conclusions. This is not so since the whole train of thought may be determined by the choice of entry point It is useful to develop some skill in picking out and following different entry points.
The attention area is limited and includes much less information than is available. If something is left out of consideration then there is nothing which will make it come back into consideration at a later point. What is there does not usually indicate what is missing. Attention usually settles over the most obvious areas. A slight shift in attention may by itself restructure a situation. One tries deliberately to rotate attention over all parts of the problem, especially those which do not seem to merit it.
Random stimulation 18
The three ways of encouraging lateral thinking discussed in this book are:
Awareness of the principles of lateral thinking, the need for lateral thinking, the rigidity of vertical thinking patterns.
The use of some definite technique which develops the original pattern and may bring about restructuring.
The deliberate alteration of circumstances so that they can stimulate restructuring.
Most of the techniques discussed so far have worked from within the idea. The idea has been developed according to some routine process with the intention of allowing the information to snap together again in a new pattern. But instead of trying to work from within the idea one can deliberately generate external stimulation which then acts on the idea from outside. This is how random stimulation works.
Some of the lateral methods discussed in this book have not been very different from vertical methods though the way they were used and the intention behind them may have been different. The use of random stimulation is fundamentally different from vertical thinking. With vertical thinking one deals only with what is relevant. In fact one spends most of one’s time selecting out what is relevant and what is not With random stimulation one uses any information whatsoever. No matter how unrelated it may be no information is rejected as useless. The more irrelevant the information the more useful it may be.
Generating random inputs
The two main ways of bringing about random stimulation are:
Exposure.
Formal generation.
Exposure
The division between exposure and formal generation of random stimulation is only one of convenience. If one actively puts one-self into a position where one is subjected to random stimulation that is part exposure and part formal generation. The following points may serve to illustrate the way random stimulation can be used.
1. Accepting and even welcoming random inputs. Instead of shutting out something which does not appear relevant one regards it as a random input and pays it attention. This involves no further activity than an attitude that notices what comes along.
2. Exposure to the ideas of others. In a brainstorming session the ideas of others act as random inputs in the sense that they do not have to follow one’s own line of thought even though they occupy the same field of relevance. Listening to others even if one disagrees very strongly with their ideas can provide useful input.
3. Exposure to ideas from completely different fields. This sometimes goes under the heading of‘cross disciplinary fertilization’. It means discussing a matter with someone in a totally different field. For instance a medical scientist might discuss systems behaviour with a business analyst or with a fashion designer. One can also listen to other people talking on their own subject.
4. Physical exposure to random stimulation. This may involve wandering around an area which contains a multitude of different objects, for instance a general store like Woolworths or a toy shop. It may also mean going along to an exhibition which has nothing to do with the subject you are interested in.
The main point about the exposure method is to realize that one is never looking for anything. One could go to an exhibition to see if there was anything relevant. One could discuss a problem with someone in another field in order to hear their views on it. But that is not the purpose. If one goes looking for something relevant then one has preset ideas of relevance. And such preset ideas of relevance can only arise from the current way of looking at the situation. One wanders around with a completely blank mind and waits for something to catch one’s attention. Even if nothing seems to catch one’s attention there is still no effort to find something useful.
Formal generation of random input
Because attention is a passive process even if one wanders around an exhibition without looking for anything relevant attention does tend to settle on items which have some relevance to the established way of looking at a situation. No matter how hard one tries to resist doing so one is still exerting some selection. This reduces the random nature of the input but still allows it to be very effective. In order to use truly random inputs one has to generate them deliberately. This seems paradoxical in so far as a random input is supposed to occur by chance. What one actually does is to set up a formal process to produce chance events. Shaking a pair of dice is such a situation. Three methods are suggested below:
1. Use of a dictionary to provide a random word.
2. Formal selection of a book or journal in a library.
3. The use of some routine to select an object from the surroundings (e.g. the nearest red object). The use of a dictionary will be. described in more detail further on in this section. Formal selection of a book or journal simply means that one makes a point of picking up a journal from a particular position on the shelves no matter what the journal may be. One opens it and reads any one article in it no matter how remote these may seem. One can do the same thing with a book. These are but examples of how one can set up deliberate habits or routines in order to generate random inputs.
The effect of random stimulation
Why should random stimulation have any effect? Why should a totally unrelated piece of information help to bring about the restructuring of an established pattern?
Random stimulation only works because the mind functions as a self-maximizing memory system. In such a system there is a limited and coherent attention span.* This means that any two inputs cannot remain separate no matter how unconnected they are. Normally if there were two unconnected inputs one of them would be ignored and the other one would be attended to. But if both are deliberately held in attention (by deliberately arranging the setting) then a connection will eventually form between the two. At first there may be a rapid alternation of attention between the two items but soon the short term memory effect * will establish some sort of link.
In this type of system nothing can be truly irrelevant.
The established patterns on the memory surface are stable patterns. That does not mean that they do not change but that the pattern of change is stable. The flow of thought is stable. This equilibrium state is altered by the sudden inclusion of some new information.
Sometimes the new equilibrium state is very similar to the old one with a slight alteration to include the new information. At other times a complete restructuring comes about. There is a game in which plastic discs are placed within a frame one side of which is being forced inward by a spring. The pressure of this spring forces the plastic discs together to give a stable structure. Each player in turn removes a plastic disc. Usually the pattern shifts slightly to achieve a new equilibrium state. But sometimes there is a big change and the whole pattern is restructured. With a random input one is putting something in instead of taking it out but the shift in equilibrium occurs is the same way.
Random stimulation c
an work in two other ways. The random input can bring about a new entry point to the problem under consideration. The diagram, below suggests a situation and the natural way this situation would develop. A random input is then added and a connection develops between the situation and the random input As a result a new entry point is provided and the line of development of the original situation may be altered.
A random input can also work as an analogy. A single word from a dictionary provides a situation which has its own line of development. When this is related to the development of the problem being considered one has the analogy effect described in a previous chapter.
Random word stimulation
This is a practical and definite procedure in which the true random nature of the input is beyond doubt If one is a purist one can use a table of random numbers to select a page in a dictionary. The number of a word on that page (counting down the page) can also be obtained from the table of random numbers. With less trouble one can simply think of two numbers and find the word that way. Or throw some dice. What one must not do is to open a dictionary and go through the pages until one finds a likely looking word. That would be selection and it would be useless from a random stimulation point of view.
The numbers 473–13 were given by a table of random numbers and using the Penguin English Dictionary the word located was: ‘noose’. The problem under consideration was ‘the housing shortage’. Over a timed three minute period the following ideas were generated:
noose – tightening noose – execution – what are the difficulties in executing a housing programme – what is the bottleneck, is it capital, labour or land?
noose tightens – things are going to get worse with the present rate of population increase.
noose – rope – suspension construction system – tentlike houses but made of permanent materials – easily packed and erected – or on a large scale with several houses suspended from one framework – much lighter materials possible if walls did not have to support themselves and the roof.