Why do some people always seem to be having new idea while others of equal intelligence never do? This book looks at this. It is an early formulation of De Bono's ideas on Creative, Designing Thinking. He later refined many of the concepts and techniques through Specific Methods in later books like Serious Creativity. -Vertical Thinking is high probability, straight ahead thinking. Lateral thinking is low probability, sideways thinking.
-Ideas don't come about through sheer vertical effort.
-Dominant ideas tend to polarize thought.
-New info which might smash an old idea will often be incorporated into it.
-Escaping dominant idea:
1) Identify dominant idea which polarizes situation, then you can recognize it and avoid it.
2) Acknowledge idea then distort it until it loses its identity and collapses.

-Rejecting an idea is only exchanging positive domination for negative domination.
-Freedom of thought is just as limited by rejection than acceptance of ideas.
-A dominant idea seen as an obstacle rather than a convenience is the firt principle of lateral thinking.

A) Principles of Lateral Thinking:

1. Recognition of dominant polarizing ideas.
2. The search for different ways of looking at things.
3. A relaxation of the rigid control of vertical thinking.
4. The use of Chance.

C) One technique to avoid the rigidity of words is to think in terms of visual images and not use words at all.

D)A very useful technique for excaping from the fixed parts of problems is to break parts down into various smaller parts and recombine them to form larger novel parts.

-Problems are the jolts that shift things out of the smooth rut of mere adequacy.
-Usual way is to accept something as adequate until new info proves it inadequate.Why not reverse process and develop new ways of looking at things and seeing if it proves useful?
-No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered.
-Another technique is to turn upside down deliberately by consciously reversing some relationship.
-Another way is to transfer the relationships to an easier handled situation.- An analogy for breaking down the rigidity of particular ways of looking.
-Another simple technique is to shift emphasis from one part of the problem to another. Each element is placed in spotlight.
-Vertical thinking is not only ineffective in generating new ideas but is also inhibiting.
-Purpose of logic should be to confirm final conclusions.
- As lateral thinking has no fixed direction there is no difficulty in going away from a problem in order to solve it.
-Limitations of vertical thinking include being right at every stage and having everything rigidly defined.
-In its early stages an idea might exist in a form too contradictory for logical acceptance. This doesn't mean it cannot develop into a useful new idea. Too early expression may commit an idea to a pattern of development it may not naturally have followed.
-A new idea can't have a form thrust on it.
-Logical judgement can only deal with facts it is aware about.
-Sometimes useful to try to be deliberately wrong in your evaluation and try to proceed as far as you can in each direction. A better point of view may be discovered.
-With lateral thinking one wonders and wanders. No attempt to explain is given. If it gives rise to an idea, Okay, if not, Okay. But it is noted in its pure form. Open consciousness embraces all it is offered without the need to explain or classify or construct at every instant.
-Chance is important in generation of new ideas. It provides something to look at when that something could never have been looked for.
-Play encourages chance. It must be without direction or purpose.
-Brainstorming = mutual stimulation with no inhibitions.
- Wandering around new place exposes you to new stimulus, readiness to consider anything instead of a searching attitude.
-Method: Deliberate intertwining of many separate trains of thought. Ways of looking at things in one field become original in another.
-With practice, looking at things in different ways the capacity to find a context gets stronger.
-Pick an object out of environment and try to see how it could be relevant to matter under consideration.
-Don't seek out only relevant information. This relevance is judged by old ideas, not new.
-Keep at it. You get better and learn to use it more.
-Simplicity and Effectiveness: the two aims of Lateral Thinking.
-Quite often the difficulty in looking for something is one carries in mind not the principle itself but some embodiment of it. It can be useful to try to find examples of some particular thing that is needed to try something out.
-Sometimes it is amusing to look at an object and try to develop an idea from it.
-The usefulness of ordinary objective in another context is often surprising.
-Logic needs a direction to work. Lateral thinking does not.
-The ideal of Lateral Thinking is the simplicity of extreme sophistication, the simplicity of an idea that is very effective in action and yet elemental in its form. It is the simplicity of richness, not of poverty. It is the simplicity of fullness, not emptiness.
-"Intrinsic Rightness"
-If you can't think laterally, you become eaten by someone who can.
-The aim of Lateral Thinking is to generate new ideas.
-Lateral Thinking is more a habit of thinking than knowledge of some technique.
-The usefulness of an outside view of a problem is not only a new point of view but also you are not bogged down by a particular way of thinking and approaching things that has developed to those closest to a problem.
-Lateral thinking serves a purpose even if only as a catalyst to set off some new train of thought. Sometimes a new idea may be tantalizingly close to hand.
-Trying to always be right stops one from looking when one is wrong.