The books describes lateral thinking as moving backwards and vertical thinking as moving forward. Something that has been bothering me about these ideas is mentioned in this chapter: the distinction is completely arbitrary. vertical thinking can be developing and restructuring, as well as lateral thinking. For me, these two concepts are not even distinguishable in most aspects.
One thing that still bothers me is how vertical thinking is described as “being right all along”. I genuinely don’t think such thing exist. Later on the chapter it is explained that in lateral thinking “wrong” ideas are also explored, which is different from being right all along. However, I still think that the concepts are too close to be considered two different things.
What I thought was interesting about this chapter was how wrong ideas are explored. The way i interpret it was : ok it is wrong, but what if it wasn’t ?
Which I think is a interesting way of approaching problems.