Lateral Thinking

"The Lateral Thinking creativity program provides you with a number of proven and concrete ways to learn the power of creativity and innovation."  - Edward de Bono

Lateral Thinking training will teach you how to think creatively, turn problems into opportunities, find alternative solutions, & dramatically increase your number of new and practical ideas using unconventional thinking techniques normally untapped by our usual ways of thinking.

Lateral Thinking Brochure

Who Needs Lateral Thinking?

Not only people who devise strategy or work in R & D, but anyone who wants a disciplined process for innovation, idea generation, concept development, creative problem solving, or a strategy to challenge the status quo can benefit from Lateral Thinking.

If you face fast-changing trends, fierce competition, and the need to work miracles, you need Lateral Thinking.

Lateral Thinking Techniques

1. Alternatives / Concept Extraction: Use concepts to breed new ideas
2. Focus: Sharpen or change your focus to improve your creative efforts
3. Challenge: Break free from the limits of accepted ways of operating
4. Random Entry: Use unconnected input to open new lines of thinking
5. Provocation: Move from a provocative statement to useful ideas
6. Harvesting: Select the best of early ideas and shape them into useable approaches
7. Treatment of Ideas: Develop ideas and shape them to fit an organization or situation

"Great business competitors are great lateral thinkers . . ." - Edward de Bono

How Might You Use Lateral Thinking?

The Lateral Thinking techniques are useful in a variety of applications.

• Constructively challenge the status quo to enable new ideas to surface
• Find and build on the concept behind an idea to create more ideas
• Solve problems in ways that don’t initially come to mind
• Use alternatives to liberate and harness the creative energy of the organization
• Turn problems into opportunities
• Select the best alternate ideas and implement them 

“If you haven't heard of Edward de Bono or of Lateral Thinking, perhaps you have been too busy thinking in conventional ways." - Forbes Magazine

Learn Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking On-Site Training Seminars
Bring our Lateral Thinking Instructor in-house to deliver a one- or two-day Lateral Thinking seminar.
Lateral Thinking On-Site Training Seminar Details

Lateral Thinking Open Seminars
Attend a Lateral Thinking seminar with employees from other organizations.
Lateral Thinking Training Seminar Dates & Locations

Meeting Facilitation Using the de Bono Thinking Systems
de Bono Consulting will facilitate your meeting(s) using the de Bono Thinking Systems.
Meeting Facilitation Information

Lateral Thinking Train-the-Trainer Certification
Completing the Official Lateral Thinking Certification is required if you wish to teach Lateral Thinking to others.

• On-Site Lateral Thinking Certification
• Public Lateral Thinking Certification

Lateral Thinking Conference / Convention Presentations
Have de Bono Consulting present a Lateral Thinking keynote, general session, or breakout session. Call 800.278.1292 for details.

Lateral Thinking Results

• Prudential’s Ron Barbaro (former CEO of Prudential-Canada) used their Lateral Thinking training to develop one of the most successful products for the insurance industry, “Living Benefits.”
• DuPont benchmarked every creativity process on the market for its Creativity Center. Dr. David Tanner, former technical director of DuPont, says that “the de Bono techniques were the most useful” to DuPont. For example, an employee’s $30 million suggestion – the reengineering of a manufacturing process for Kevlar – eliminated nine steps in the manufacturing process as a result of using Lateral Thinking™ techniques.
• Read more in Innovation: Case by Case by de Bono Consulting CEO and Founder, Barbara Stennes

Lateral Thinking Testimonials

“Great program! Very useful for strategic decisions and daily use. I will apply in sub-team work. Very useful at this specific moment . . .”

“A very useful exercise in providing a framework to stimulate out-of-the-box thinking.”

“Useful tools for the team to use going forward. Therefore, it was very useful for the team to participate together.”

Lateral Thinking Book by Edward de Bono

This book, now an internationally known bestseller, is a textbook of creativity. It shows how the habit of lateral thinking can be encouraged and new ideas generated. Dr. de Bono has worked out special techniques for doing this, in groups or alone, and the result is a triumph of entertaining education. These de Bono thinking methods are used by people of all ages and professions.

"Very often I am told that an organisation has 'more ideas than it can ever use'. I am always a little suspicious about that reply because it suggests that the ideas are not very good. You can never have too many ideas."
-- Edward de Bono