Lateral thinking, anyone?

[Skywave]

Elsewhere on this site I have made reference to lateral thinking as a means of over-coming an apparently insurmountable problem. In that particular thread (DAC90A, dim dial lights), I posed this very question, and suggested that a new thread might be the best place for a discussion of this topic. Hence, I have opened this thread as a place for responses from you all.

I invite your tales & anecdotes . . . . .

Al. / June 2, 2013 //

[Yorkie]

I guess I won’t be alone in that during my career I’ve attended various courses on ‘lateral thinking’ which outlined the two approaches to finding solutions to problems, particularly in terms of working as a team - either ‘convergent’ or ‘divergent’ thinking. (Converging on the problem taking a narrow view, or diverging and thinking of broader less obvious oslutions).

Because of the now well known ‘join the dots with one line’ example, we’ve been lumbered with that awful hackneyed term ‘thinking outside of the box’. We’re asked to join the dots in one go without lifting the pen from the paper, and we assume that we are constrained by the area defined by the dots, which form a rectangle (the ‘box’). No-on says we can’t stray beyond the boundaries of the dots, but instead of broadening our thinking, we try to converge on a solution 'withing the box' and fail. Remove that mental constraint, and it becomes an easy task.

Another example used is that your car gets a puncture at the side of the road, so your jack up the car, remove the wheel, intending to fit the spare, but all of the bolts roll down the hill and fall into a drain. What do you do next? Call the breakdown services, look for a car spares firm, call a taxi to take you to the nearest garage to get some new bolts? That’s the ‘convergent thinking’ approach to the problem.

It’s such an oft used example that I guess most will know the answer, arrived at by divergent (lateral) thinking: Take one bolt from each other the other three wheels, so that all four wheels have three bolts. Safe enough to get you home or to a garage.

We were advised that the reason that the Japanese, Chinese and other oriental nationalities are so inventive is that they don’t understand the concept of personal ownership of ideas or wanting to take personal credit for it – if a design team is working on a problem, whoever comes up with an idea, if it seems to be a good idea they all discuss and explore it and take joint ownership of the idea, whereas in western society, there is an inbuilt competitive desire and ambition to come out as ‘top dog’ - to be 'king of the hill' or 'roost ruler'. Hence, if someone comes up with an idea, other dominant team members will ‘rubbish it' and try to come up with a better idea or say that the idea has been tried before and it failed.

At the outset of a training course we were asked to find as many uses for a paper clip and a leather belt as possible. Though we weren’t told to work individually (and the course was entitled ‘Working as a Team’ so there was a clue in that, which we all ignored, so keen were we to try to draw up the longest and best list!), we all set about making our own list. We were than trained in lateral thinking – to list all of the possibilities, not evaluating each idea until we’d thought of every possibility. In a later session, we were asked to work as a team and draw up a list, (to use another hackneyed non-PC term by ‘brainstorming’) and it came as no surprise that the list was twice as long.

I think that as vintage radio enthusiasts, we often do think laterally – necessity being the mother of invention – and often come up with solutions when we need ‘unobtanium’ but can’t find a source!

Lots of info and examples on ‘tinternet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=late...g+examples&qpvt=lateral+thiniking+examples&FORM=IGRE

'Thinking outside the box' diagram - see attachment.

Waffled and dribbled Yorkie.

[camallison]

In the early 90s, I managed the turnaround and subsequent growth of a company that built HUGE metering systems for the North Sea oil & gas production platforms. To be able to shoehorn the package into a limited space, much lateral thinking had to be applied. The chaps on the shop floor had previously been "ruled" and had no ability for free-thinking. In changing that, I stressed that we had no problems, only opportunities to think out something that was holding us back.

This worked extremely well, until the day the charge-hand welder came to me and said, "Colin, we have an insurmountable opportunity".

Do you know what? He was right!

The main point was that, over 3 years, we managed to triple output with the same staff numbers and the same shop floor space to £20m a year at today's prices. Everyone, from top to bottom, including the family that owned the company, benefited from the result of that free, lateral, thinking.

Colin

PS - we eventually solved the insurmountable opportunity by lopping a foot off a 42 inch diameter header pipe. British Gas (Morecambe Bay) got their package on time, and to spec.

[pwdrive]

Years ago I was working as a R&TV engineer for a then known high street name, we were all sent to some seminar or other to come up with ideas for the company and were encouraged to think outside the box, in my mind I was satisfied that the company was crap, the management was crap, they were paying crap wages and they were going down the pan so I did a bit of lateral thinking and left.

Lawrence.

[Skywave]

"If you want creative employees, give them time to play": John Cleese, I believe. (Please correct me if I am wrong on that source).

It's been my experience within the U.K. that that is true, and it also seems that U.K. management highly disapproves of such an approach. And that, perhaps, explains why, in the U.K., R & D is so often poorly resourced.

Al.

[AlanBeckett]

We were advised that the reason that the Japanese, Chinese and other oriental nationalities are so inventive ...........

Is that so? There's a lot of copying and improving, but inventing?
I don't think so.

Alan

[Skywave]

'Lateral thinking' implies a process of 'thinking horizontally'. The opposite, of course, is 'vertical thinking': the classic approach of "if this then that, else other" analysis. The problem with that approach is that the initial start point defines and narrows the consequent range of solution possibilities. To argue that there must be an initial defined range in which the solution must exist misses the point: yes, there must be a defined range, but that does not imply, per se, that the solution set can only be obtained by a 'downwards filtering approach'. Despite my interest (and approval) of mathematics as an academic subject and its value as a problem solving tool, it does encourage vertical thinking. However, there are occasions when I have been reading mathematical texts when I have read a statement and asked "Err - where does that line of reasoning come from?" And the answer is usually that the author has taken a 'sideways jump' out of the main line of logical argument and displayed an alternative route to a successful solution. Hence, it would seem that a mix of lateral and vertical thinking is the optimum strategy for problem solution.

Al.

[Skywave]

We were advised that the reason that the Japanese, Chinese and other oriental nationalities are so inventive ...........

Is that so? There's a lot of copying and improving, but inventing?
I don't think so.
Alan

Yes, Alan, I know what you mean, but I can study someone else's design, deduce that it can be improved to fit the same need, or amended to fit a very similar requirement, and invent a few additional bits 'n' pieces to meet that original or new requirement.* Then go ahead into production: a 'copy', yes, but not a 100% 'copy': an 'improved / amended version'.
Isn't that called 'product development'?

* And, by way of an illustration, that is what I have done, over the years, to several communications receivers that I have owned. In particular, a few Yaesu-Musen products spring to mind, which, upon analysis and test, proved to be of a questionable (or even downright erroneous) in their design. The inverse of 'coals to Newcastle' ?

Al.

[Yorkie]

We were advised that the reason that the Japanese, Chinese and other oriental nationalities are so inventive ...........

Is that so? There's a lot of copying and improving, but inventing?
I don't think so.

Alan

So who invented the Sony Walkman - a 'tape recorder' that could only play tapes, which many pundits said as a concept, would flop, but which in fact set in train a whole string of innovative products which Japan designed and made, and Brits bought. And what about the Sony Triniton CRT?

Neither do I think that the Japanese came to dominate the market in the UK and elswhere for cars and motorbikes by copying the designs of Austin Allegros & Maxis or Triumph Toledos, or British motorbikes, when the industry was in its Meriden days death throes. Neither did they follow the clapped out under capitalised manufacturing techniques, management style or relationships with the bolshi workforce which epitomised the 'Red Robbo' days of BLMC.

We do now have a thriving car industry, but it's thanks to the likes of Toyota and Nissan. (Consider how many Quashqis you see around). It doesn't always mean their products are so much better - Toyota cars are highly regarded, but think how many recalls they've had.

In the States, the only thing that kept Harley Davidson alive when Honda Goldwings came on the scene and took the market for big touring bikes by storm was swingeing protectionist import tarrifs imposed by Ronald Reagan. Harley D had been reduced to making not very good lawnmowers. It took a couple of decades to get back on their feet. Honda didn't copy Harley Ds - they designed and built a far superior product that didn't keep breaking down.

As to electronics, a lot of the stuff that comes out of Japan and China isn't copied - there's not much left in the West to copy. (EG TVs and radios). Most of the computers, motherboards and peripheral stuff - even if designed in the West (EG Apple) - is manufactured in China, Malaysia etc.

Just my thoughts.

[Joe]

So who invented the Sony Walkman - a 'tape recorder' that could only play tapes, which many pundits said as a concept, would flop, but which in fact set in train a whole string of innovative products which Japan designed and made, and Brits bought. And what about the Sony Triniton CRT?

True, Sony invented the Walkman but the Compact Cassette format on which it is based was invented by Philips.

- Joe