Title: |
Business creativity, technical thinking versus lateral thinking. | ||
Author: |
Joe L. Gaskovski | Section: |
Business Creativity |
Submitted: |
January 2007 | Expertise base on: |
Experience |
Fundamentally there are two main streams to business creativity; the first is the technical thinking stream and the second is the lateral thinking stream.
The technical thinking stream is what is referred to as programmed thinking that relies on clear logical and structured ways of coming up with new products or services. A simple example of this is to take an existing product or service and look at ways to morph it (change it slightly) to come up with something new. Logical thinking is enormously effective in making products and services better. It is limited however in that it can only work so far before all practical improvements have been made.
The lateral thinking stream is a less structured (or unstructured) way of thinking that relies on brainstorming, random ideas, and illogical comparison. An example of this is to assign some unusual characteristics to a product or service and see if any new opportunities emerge from the strange associations made. (The idea of Lateral Thinking was developed and popularized by Edward de Bono). What lateral thinking allows us to do is to break out of this restrictive patterned way of thinking to generate completely new concepts and ideas, and at times some brilliant improvements to existing products.
The idea behind lateral thinking is that it recognizes our brains are pattern recognition systems, and that they do not function like computers. The benefit of having these good pattern recognition systems is that we recognize things (objects and situations) very quickly and we do not have to do a full analysis of a situation each time it arises. But unfortunately, being the creatures of habit that we are, we get stuck in those patterns of thinking and behaviour. As a result we tend to confine ourselves (to think) within them. And what happens is that the solutions we tend to develop are now based on previous solutions to similar problems. This may work for making business decisions, but it severely limits us when it comes to being creative.
The best approach for any organization is to use a combination of both technical thinking and lateral thinking.
The creative challenge.
Often the only real difference between having new ideas and not having new ideas is the self-perceptions of the people who have been asked to come up with them. People who consider themselves tend to be more creative because they give themselves the freedom to create. Whereas less creative people, because they may not consider themselves creative, may restrict their creative efforts and not give themselves the opportunity to actually create anything at all.
The first step to using creativity is to encourage it and to make it fun to do within the organization. Once it starts, you'll be amazed at how quickly new ideas can emerge.
