- Quota: lateral thinking works better when it is deliberate rather than a loose intention. give yourself a minimum quota on how many
insert lateral thinking technique hereiterations you will do - Alternatives: come up with an many alternatives to an idea as possible. don’t look for the right alternative, go for quantity.
- Why: ask why as a provocation to discomfit you and challenge an idea, not to find an answer. keep asking why to each subsequent response for a why question.
- Reversal: take an idea and find as many reversals of it as you can.
- Analogies: take an idea, break it into steps, abstract those steps, apply those abstractions to a different idea.
- Random Stimulation: introduce a random word to an existing idea; introduce multiple random words to an existing idea; introduce a random word to multiple ideas; put two or more random words together.
- Cliche Units: identify cliche patterns, break them down into sub-cliches then reduce down to only essential parts and repeat. trim, split, and combine the cliche patterns.
- Abstracting Functions: abstract an idea by it’s functionality. break it down into functions and sub-functions. rearrange and reconsider these functions.
- Polarization: put opposites together.
- Concepts/Labels: break an idea down into a groups, each group is then denoted by a label/name. so now the idea is a series of labels. try to see across the divisions and come up with other ways to break it down into groups with labels. once labels are set in our minds they are hard to break. challenge the labels, do without one or more labels, and/or establish new labels.
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