Creativity has been long regarded as a special talent, a result-driven perspective that people “without this talent” is difficult to grasp on. This book introduces the notion of lateral thinking, a mode of gathering and processing information closely related to creativity that anyone can learn to gain using his or her insight. This book describes lateral thinking as restructuring, escape and the provocation of new patterns, which I see related to one of our classmate’s thought on creativity as “remixing existing ideas”.
Lateral Thinking is complementary to traditional, or vertical / logical thinking used in math and logic. Lateral thinking is generative and vertical thinking is selective. Hence, I believe that one should master both in order to be creative. Moreover, vertical thinking is dealing with the middle steps between the starting choice and the conclusion. It is sound and strong, but cannot extend beyond the constraints of the initial perceptual choice. It questions the initial assumptions and prevents the arrogance of any seemingly rigid conclusion. Lateral thinking is like digging a hole at a different place. For me, it is like as if we are useing different probation techniques to understand the full properties of some new material.