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How To Spark Lateral Thinking

The document discusses lateral thinking and its application in problem-solving by encouraging unconventional approaches. It presents various questions that prompt individuals to change their perspective, illustrated with examples from different fields, such as literature and technology. The emphasis is on redefining challenges to foster innovative solutions, leading to breakthroughs and impactful results.

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How To Spark Lateral Thinking And Train Yourself To Approach Problems Differently @ShaneSnow - www.shanesnow.com - #Smartcuts
2 What is lateral thinking? @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
3 Pretend you have a cake that you want to cut into 8 pieces… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts … but you can only make 3 cuts
4 How most people cut the cake (using conventional thinking): Cut 1
5 Cut 2 How most people cut the cake (using conventional thinking):
6 Cut 3 (only 6 pieces!) How most people cut the cake (using conventional thinking):
7 Cut 1 How to cut the cake using lateral thinking:
8 Cut 2 How to cut the cake using lateral thinking:
9 Cut 3 (8 pieces!) How to cut the cake using lateral thinking:
10 Lateral thinking is when you turn problems around and approach them from unconventional angles. @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
11 The easiest way to make yourself use lateral thinking is to ask yourself a question that forces you to change the angle at which you look at the problem. @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
12 Here are a few of my favorites: @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
13 QUESTION 1: How would a type of person of a different background or expertise look at this problem? @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
14 FOR EXAMPLE: When James Patterson wrote his first book, he had trouble getting his publisher to promote it… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
15 So he did what a regular writer would never do and made his own TV commercial himself! (It worked.) @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts It was easy for Patterson to come up with this because his actual job was making TV commercials.
16 QUESTION 2: How have people in different industries than yours already solved similar problems in the past? @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
17 FOR EXAMPLE: When a hospital in London needed to fix problems with complicated equipment changes while kids were on life support… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
18 They solved the problem by studying what race car pit crews do to do the same thing in a very different place. @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
19 QUESTION 3: What if you had to use a different era of technology, or a tool from a different job for this job? @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
20 FOR EXAMPLE: You know those terrible Blister-Pak packages that you get electronics in? (They’re impossible to open!) @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
21 It turns out that a can-opener is the easiest way to open them! Repurposing tools from other times or jobs can be an incredible way to find breakthrough solutions. @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
22 QUESTION 4: What if you had to do this 10x better? (So much better that you can’t just do more of the same thing.) @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
23 FOR EXAMPLE: When Google’s R&D laboratory, Google[x], decided to make a car that was 10x safer than a typical car… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
24 Instead of designing better car parts, stronger frames, or doing lots of crash testing (like they might have if the challenge was just to make a car 2x as safe)… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
25 …they designed a car that used computers and sensors to drive itself and avoid accidents entirely. (At the time of this writing, Google’s prototype self-driving cars have had significantly fewer accidents than human drivers—almost all of them were the Google car being rear ended by other drivers, and none of them severe enough to seriously injure.) @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
26 QUESTION 5: What if we had to do this 100 times cheaper? (So cheap that you can’t just do the same thing more efficiently.) @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
27 FOR EXAMPLE: When Stanford students wanted to make an infant incubator for poor countries, instead of trying to make a $20,000 incubator a little cheaper… @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
28 …they were forced to redefine the challenge of “make a cheaper incubator” to “keep a baby warm for $200.” Which helped them make this: @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts
29 They had to make it so cheap that the problem of “make a cheaper incubator” became “keep a baby warm for $200.” Which helped them make this: @ShaneSnow #Smartcuts 90,000 babies lives saved, and counting
30 Shane Snow shanesnow.com @shanesnow Get a copy of Smartcuts for more on lateral thinking in history at http://www.shanesnow.com/smartcuts