Creative thinking is a skill
01/05/2009

Creativity is too often regarded as some inborn talent which some people have and others can only envy. This is totally wrong and very old fashioned. Creative thinking isa skill which everyone can acquire. As with any skill some people might become bettter at it than others. Lateral Thinking lays out formal tools for thinking creativily. These can used in a deliberate and structured way. Te tools are based on an understanding of the brain as a pattern-making system. All patterning systems are asymmetric. This gives rise to both humour and creativity. There is no mystery about it. How the brain forms patterns is described in my book 'The Mechanism of Mind' published in 1969. The use of just one lateral thinking tool by a workshop one afternoon generated 21,000 new ideas.