Activity: Lateral Thinking in practice
To find the answer, ask yourself the right questions! Share your ideas in the Forum.
“Antonio and Cleopatra are lying dead on the floor of a villa in Egypt. Nearby is a broken bowl. There is no mark on either of their bodies and they were not poisoned. How did they die?”
“Could you connect 9 points with only 4 line segments without lifting the pen from the paper?”
Albert sells geogaphic maps. His job gave him an idea to puzzle his friends, he asks them: “How do you draw a triangle on a sheet of paper so that all three inside angles are at 90 degrees?”
Use your imagination to understand what these simple drawings represent. Things are not always what they seem at first glance, as we discover every time we engage in a lateral thinking exercise.
Here are four matches arranged to form a Greek cross, that is a cross with equal arms. Can you create a square by moving only one of the matches?
One of the most famous lateral thinking technique is “Six Thinking Hats” by Edward de Bono. You can learn more by exploring the Six Thinking Hat website or by consulting the resources below.
Resources
- De Bono, E. (2017). Six Thinking Hats: The multi-million bestselling guide to running better meetings and making faster decisions. Penguin uk., Chicago.
- De Bono, E. (2014). Lateral Thinking: An Introduction. Random House.
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