It is believed that creative thinking is a talent that cannot be developed or studied in any way. And creativity is a skill that is given only to some people from birth. The principles of lateral thinking developed by Edward de Bono in 1968 refute these claims.
The creator of the lateral thinking system, Edward de Bono, is one of the most famous contemporary psychologists and writers. He is an internationally recognized British expert on creative thinking. De Bono was born on May 19, 1933 in Malta. He studied at the university in his homeland. And also, at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, where he later taught. De Bono first described the system of lateral thinking developed by him in his book "Mechanisms of the Mind" in 1969.
The term "lateral thinking" originated from lat. the words lateralis, which means lateral or offset. It is understood as a new non-standard way of thinking that differs from the traditional one. Edward de Bono created a framework for creative (lateral) thinking in addition to the already existing logical (vertical) and fantasy (horizontal). The methods proposed by him allow finding non-standard approaches and solutions to problems that cannot be performed by logic.
Logical thinking is aimed at step-by-step processing of information, in contrast to creative thinking, which allows the movement of thought in any direction. Lateral thinking attracts intuition and thus creates new original patterns and gets rid of stereotypes. Moreover, this way of thinking is not opposed to de Bono in his works, logical, but rather complements and improves it.
In education, the main emphasis is on the development of vertical, logical thinking, because it is this that is most suitable for working with information. According to de Bono, using creative thinking of one's own will is as easy as logical. For this, there are special techniques that allow you to develop lateral thinking.
Creative thinking creates a new idea, but only through logic does it become possible to bring it to life. According to the author, possession of only one way of thinking is not enough for high productivity and success of a person in the modern developing world.
