Why Lateral Thinking is Important?

The Way Forward
Rohana, Accountant, Sri Lanka
Lateral thinking is a combination of critical thinking, creative thinking, mathematical thinking and all other thinking patterns. We also need to have good experience to get the best out of the lateral thinking. We need to brake all our assumptions, if we are to move forward with lateral thinking.

Lateral Thinking Brings Out Human Capital
Jackie Yeoh, Manager, Malaysia
Lateral thinking should be the way that every employee should think while in employment. This will the bring out the best of any human capital in an organization.

Task -> Think Lateral or Not
Srinivasan, Manager, India
Lateral thinking cannot be associated with the old and new man. It depends on the task if and how we should encourage people to think laterally.

All Types of Thinking are Important
Gary Wong, Consultant, Canada
@Rohana: Edward De Bono designed the 6 thinking hats approach because people were getting confused and overwhelmed with too many thoughts.
We organize our thinking into 6 structured ways and then follow a process - a sequence of hats. Lateral thinking is not a combination of various types of thinking. But it is just the green hat - only for exploring new ideas and possibilities, nothing more.
Critical thinking is black hat.
Mathematical thinking is white hat if it's solely dealing with information, data, knowledge.
A hat sequence for problem-solving is: blue (what's the problem?), white (what do we know?), green (what solutions are there?), yellow (what are the benefits?), black (what are the risks?), red (let's pick one that we emotionally feel is best), blue (what the next steps?) This shows all types of thinking are important.
When working with groups, the 6th approach is also called parallel thinking. Everyone thinks the same way at the same time. No mixing of hats allowed.