The father of Lateral Thinking Edward De Bono has made a wonderful contribution to our understanding of how our brain might work (no-one really knows for sure). His concept that the brain acts like a self-organising, information patterning  system was way ahead of his time.

But is Lateral Thinking (i.e. deliberately moving across a pattern) enough in this fast-paced world?

My proposition is that both critical and creative thinking whilst necessary are not sufficient anymore. We need to be able to think and act faster. This will enable us to better thrive in an accelerating and time-poor world.

I have tried to build on De Bono’s work by adding an extra dimension. We can now control not only how we think but what pace we think at. And by doing so we can paradoxically become more creative, efficient, productive and feel more energised.

For a good summary of De-Bono’s work see below:

1. Challenge the process: This doesn’t mean attack it. Go back to the first principles of the problem and review the direction of the process.
   Example:  a local authority in New Zealand wanted to free up parking spaces but the cost of monitoring parking was expensive. The solution was to allow free parking to anyone who kept their headlights on while parked.
2. Set up a provocative statement: This means looking at the solution to a problem in an impossible or contradictory way.
   Example: a number of factories were ignoring anti-pollution regulations and polluting a river. The provocative statement was: “The factories have to be downstream of themselves”. The resulting solution was making every factory build their inlet pipes downstream of their outlet pipes — they are now the first to suffer from their own polution.
3. Use random words: Adding an element of chance will allow you to come at a problem from a different starting point, one you would not have ordinarily chosen. Picking random words out of a bag forces your mind to make random associations, effectively producing solutions you wouldn’t be able to arrive at using well-worn analytical processes.
4. Use parallel thinking: Instead of going into teams to argue the relative merits of a number of solutions, everyone approach each solution together in every way. De Bono advocates the symbolic wearing of six coloured hats to adopt positive, negative, rational and emotional standpoints. Organisations such as Boeing, JP Morgan and IBM have used this device to reduce meeting times by up to tenfold.

So if you combine lateral and speed thinking you can create your own magic. My Speed Thinking formula–two minutes and nine possibilities.