Question

Explain the concept of lateral thinking.

Answer 1

A truck is driven under a bridge, but it's too big by two inches and gets stuck. Everyone stands around trying to work out how to back the truck up, or cut the top of the truck off, or lift the bridge. A lateral thinker lets the air out of the tyres to drop it a couple of inches.

Answer 2

Lateral thinking is teh ability to follow a logical sequence as A, B, C, but also, to visualize what happens outside the sequence (that´s why its called lateral), say A1, A2, A3 an so on, followed by B1,B2,B3 and so on. On a more human experience-like example, say you listen to an argument and instead of judging who is right or wrong you analyze the situation surrounding the facts. That´s lateral thinking. There is also a multidimensional thinking, that tries to comprehend the subtle interrelation among circunstances and factors that affect a phenomenon.

Answer 3

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, and writer. He defines it as a technique of problem solving by approaching problems indirectly at diverse angles instead of concentrating on one approach at length. For example:. . It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours? . . . . . The answer appears to be 25 feet deep, but we can generate some lateral thinking ideas about what affects the size of the hole:. . A hole may need to be of a certain size or shape so digging might stop early at a required depth. . The deeper a hole is the more effort is required to dig it since waste soil needs to be lifted higher to the ground level. There is a limit to how deep a hole can be dug by man power without use of ladders or hoists for soil removal, and 25 feet is beyond this limit. . Deeper soil layers may be harder to dig out, or we may hit bedrock or the water table. . Each man digging needs space to use a shovel. . It is possible that with more people working on a project, each person may become less efficient due to increased opportunity for distraction, the assumption he can slack off, more people to talk to, etc. . More men could work in shifts to dig faster for longer. . There are more men but are there more shovels? . The two hours dug by ten men may be under different weather conditions than the two hours dug by two men. . Rain could flood the hole to prevent digging. . Temperature conditions may freeze the men before they finish. . Would we rather have 5 holes each 5 feet deep? . The two men may be an engineering crew with digging machinery. . What if one man in each group is a manager who will not actually dig? . The extra eight men might not be strong enough to dig, or much stronger than the first two. . Extraterrestrials might decide to blow up the planet before the hole is dug. . God might strike them down for working on the sabbath. . They may get eaten by a previously undiscovered species of ravenous underground razor-toothed worms. . A massive planet-dissolving dust cloud might destroy the earth. . Maybe the question was asked in a strange foreign language that resembles English but whose words have completely different meanings and it was just a coincidence that the question made sense in English.

Answer 4

opposed thinking means lateral thinking.

Answer 5

i think being a lateral thinker means sort of thinking things through, and not limiting oneself to the way one may normally think. Opening up options and kind of thinking all over the board instead of limiting oneself. Linear thinking would be thinking about things in an ordered fashion..1,2,3. lateral thinking is a way to let your mind wander and explore different possibilities, to come up with new ideas.

Answer 6

thinking in a way that is non-conventional.. . if the question were why did the man wear a hat on his head?. . conventional answer: to protect himself from the sun.. . lateral thinking answer: because everyday after work he walks under a tree with an enormous number of birds nesting in it. he wears the hat to catch any droppings that may fall as he passes below the tree.. . the answer takes into account many different factors that come into play that we may not be aware of