Lateral thinking
What is lateral thinking?
I’m pretty sure you’ve already heard about lateral thinking. Probably you’ve even read something about this. Lateral thinking means thinking out of the box, looking at problems from unusual angles. It means finding answers to your questions by thinking unconventionally. Because of our educational system, we tend to use some standard connections when looking for answers. Lateral thinking is exactly the opposite. It tries to break the thinking patterns and it tries to break the default bonds. We all tend to think in default patterns, patterns which were formed during our education. Probably that is why we all have similar lives, we all go to school and try to get good grades, then we all do our best to get well payed jobs and become good managers. Our life plans look pretty similar because we’ve been taught to think in some predefined patterns.
How can lateral thinking help me?
When you are facing a problem and you think that no usual method will work, you might find a great solution by using lateral thinking. I was facing this problem while thinking about how can the advertising industry be revived? Even though it makes a lot of money yearly, the ways the ads are spread aren’t very efficient. On the internet, the most used types of ads are banners and text ads. I’d say that video ads are much more efficient and can transmit much more information. But how can you make the readers watch video ads? By using lateral thinking, you might find a few good answers.
Finding solutions using lateral thinking
Let’s think about peer to peer networks. They offer means to download content like music, movies, software, without paying. The conventional thinking is that the ones who download also have to pay. But from a lateral thinking perspective, I’d ask: why? Why shouldn’t I be able to download content without paying? Why shouldn’t or couldn’t someone else pay? Why can’t the money come from some other source, not from the ones that download. It sounds good, but where could these money come from? I give you one hint: advertising 
.
If you read my article about Advertising industry crossroad you will see that I have suggested a solution for reinvigorating this industry. Why shouldn’t the publishers share the money with the consumers? There are a lot of money spent yearly on advertising industry, how to make this more efficient, how can we make sure that more interested people get to see the ads? You’ll get some hints inside the article. This is another example of lateral thinking.
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If everyone is thinking outside of the box, can the box continue to exist? Is the box a black box, or a white box? Is there some racist bias in those terms? Is that last question evidence that I’m thinking in the “race” box, but not in the “thinking” box — and does that qualify as thinking outside “the” box? Should we be talking about “many boxes” rather than a single box and being “in” or “out” of the “box”? Are we beyond boxes altogether, and already anti-box?
The conventional thinking is that if you make a box, you don’t have to pay for the idea of the box, just the box itself. But, obviously, every box maker tries to sell the idea of adding a brand or image onto the box, to capture some extra revenue. Sometimes, the box is free, because there’s an advertisement on it… for something other than what the box contains. Like, I just threw away a broken computer mouse with an advertisement for Norvasc on it. Norvasc is a drug to reduce hypertension. If you say “norvasc” with a mouthful of food, it sounds like “no box”.
The mouse was a tool, but it became an advertisement. The advertisement paid for the mouse, but, ultimately, the people with hypertension will pay for both the drug, and the mouse. Like the mouse, the users of Norvasc will die sooner than expected, but will “mention” the drug to a few people over their shortened lifetimes.
Interestingly enough, the term “Norvasc” is, itself, an advertisement for the generic “amlodipine.” The trademark is used to distinguish one kind of amlodipine from another, despite the fact that they are basically the same, cheap chemicals. Like “Coke”, “it’s the real thing” when it comes with a trademark.
I’m branding myself as a middle aged person, by saying “it’s the real thing.” That’s putting me into a “box”, in case you didn’t know.
Black box or white box, it doesn
t matter. It’s just an expression, it has no racial meaning. Thinking inside the box means thinking by some predefined patterns and thinking outside the box means thinking free, with no bonds.
The society in thousands of years has created some patterns like “this is good”, “this is bad”, “this is wrong” and “this is right”. Thinking out of the box means questioning even if everybody else says otherwise.
Let’s take Larry and Sergei (Google’s founders) for example. When they were working at the search engine, everybody around them told them that search has no future. And right now, we can’t imagine the web without search.
Anyway, thanks for your comments
Makes sense! Nice article! I’ll Digg right away….