Lateral thinking: how to build individual creativity and innovative Sometimes, separate departments will be needed to spawn new products, eg. What is lateral thinking? | Lateral thinking meaning & examples Topps has launched a range of boutique stores where customers can interact with displays in a more designer-led environment. . Lateral thinking is difficult, which is why people who do it on a professional basis, such as creative teams, have fat bank balances to match. Amazon listing second-hand books instead of only new books. Uniqlos GU is so confident that shoppers will not find better elsewhere that it is experimenting with letting people leave the shop with merchandise to try before paying. The vision statement should be short but inspiring, ambitious but achievable. Innovation paths should be defined with deadlines and clear metrics, along with departmental and personal objectives. Ted Pawela High street retailers are always seeking creative ways to stand out from the competition and ensure consideration and loyalty. The meaning of creative is to dream up something new and innovative. Don't be afraid to try something new. Are You Too Trusting? However, Tesco has achieved a breakthrough in this regard, that is to say building larger stores around the world. It would then be great to see your innovation team adding the environment to their description alongside customer needs and future forces. You have to let people articulate their fears and tell you their concerns, Paul advises. It begins with the ability to ask searching questions, thus building a questioning organisation. Entrepreneur and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media Inc. An hour later, as I sat cosseted on a train home, the creative director was on the phone imploring my boss to sack me before I brought the advertising industry into disrepute. Alternative scenarios should be explored where some decisions are reversible, Paul cautions. So how are brands now working with them to shape their strategies? In the most recent such event 12 teams made it to the final of the competition where they demonstrated their working innovations to senior executives who could then select and resource the most promising concepts. a technique to best answer the interview question give an example of your lateral thinking. Are you capable of coming up with a creative solution to a problem? The more skills you and your employees have, the more you can offer to your clients and customers to gain an edge over competitors. Instead, what leaders need to focus on is how hybrid work arrangements will serve customer needs. From the rise in employer branding among B2B brands to the decline in social media ad spend, its been a busy week. However, it is running out of the suitably-sized retail spaces that it needs to give the desired customer experience. And ultimately they shop with us more frequently.. The importance of logical thinking is impressed upon us from an early age, and with good reason. The Most Valuable Skill In Difficult Times Is Lateral Thinking - Forbes There is a growing number of consumers concerned about the impact plastic is having and it would be great to see the big players putting in the leg work to bring about change. Microsoft PowerToys 0.69.0: A breakdown of the new Registry Preview app, TechRepublic Premium editorial calendar: IT policies, checklists, toolkits and research for download, BambooHR Review (2023): Pricing, Features, Pros and Cons, Get a lifetime of skills training for just $99.99, ChatGPT cheat sheet: Complete guide for 2023, The Best Payroll Software for Your Small Business in 2023, 1Password is looking to a password-free future. Employer branding and playing the long game: Your Marketing Week, Cuthbert vs Colin round 2: Aldi reignites caterpillar cake spat, Why Starling Bank decided to reinvent B2B marketing, We always follow the customer: John Lewiss marketing boss on its loyalty plans. Levi Strauss developed pre-ripped jeans after noticing customers ripping jeans. Learn everything from how to sign up for free to enterprise use cases, and start using ChatGPT quickly and effectively. This skill is highly prized in creative industries such as the media and publishing, and is valued across a range of different industries and professions, including retail, law, management consultancy and IT. Creativity is not limited to communications and in many cases becomes a central part of product development, shaping and often turning into an important part of the proposition itself. off-the-wall interview question Long-term business success comes not just from continuous improvement but leaps of innovation, as seen in industry shifts through the decades for products ranging from vacuum cleaners and LPs to software and cars. Once or twice a year they run hackathons where some 350 people work intensively in teams to develop working prototypes of ideas for business challenges. Bob Metcalfe and LAN (Xerox Parc, 3Com), and Dan Bricklin and spreadsheets (DEC, Visicorp). Lateral thinking techniques involve finding radically new approaches to problems. due to lack of effort). I was sad to find that you have added a resealable band to the top of all the cellophane packets. Related: 5 Mental Health Powers Every Entrepreneur Can Develop. mind maps), fishbone analysis, Five Whys, and Lotus Blossom. Shortlist.Me The rules are simple: value must be placed on risk, chance and instinct. You can email ideas so everyone can take a look. The vision should be communicated and reinforced over and over again so everyone understands their roles. Clarity of purpose is key, according to Canadian serial entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr and Slack. | Eric D. 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Complete openness in the teams. Once ideas are generated, they need to be analysed, evaluated, and selected, depending on factors like feasibility, customer need, and profitability. So what creative measures has Waitrose taken to differentiate itself from the pack? 4. You can learn to think the way they do. Here are my key takeaways from this delightful 190-page book, summarised in the sections below. World-renowned thinking guru, Edward De Bono, coined the term, Lateral Thinking, in 1967 in his book . The Lean Supply Chain : Managing the Challenge at Tesco - Google Books Edward de Bono defines four types of thinking tools: The thinker chooses an object at random, or a noun from a dictionary and associates it with the area they are thinking about. A third element of the Tesco Corporate Innovation programme is the support of selected external start-up companies. The Importance of Lateral Thinking for Leaders & Entrepreneurs You're motivated by alternative methods of operation, and care less about 'doing things the right way' or having to follow certain procedures to get by. Moving chief marketing officer Matt Atkinson to the new role of chief creative officer responsible for product and service innovations, Tesco is also moving other marketing disciplines into the role of chief customer officer, held by Jill Easterbrook. History is full of stories of those who successfully challenged ingrained assumptions in their fields, eg. Careers planning in itself often involves lateral thinking, especially if its not immediately obvious to you what you want to do when you graduate. [The Turning Point] How fintech unicorn MobiKwik was started to help mobile phone users make payments on-the-go, Pivot and Persist: How this woman entrepreneur went from providing HR consulting services to launching a home decor brand, Online music learning startup Muzigal is providing a global platform for music teachers and learners, Master the Art of Negotiation: Six Effective Strategies for Success, How Floatr is simplifying Personal Finance of 100 million households in India, Zypp Electrics annual revenue jumps 459% in FY23 as it gears up for expansion in Bengaluru, On This Day: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Leonardo da Vinci, the Eternal Genius, [Morning Quote] Be the change that you wish to see in the world. Speed dating events are organised at which people from the start-ups spend a short time in turn with several Tesco executives from different departments. In the same way, if you want to make sure that your own business doesn't fizzle out or become irrelevant, then you have to stop running the same old playbook. However, the chain has invested in multichannel features. ", which naturally leads to new ideas. Wouldnt it be fantastic if you could virtually walk the isles, and have the shopping experience without entering the store. Weekend took 10 months to go live and Waitrose TV was four months from concept to being on air. Your observation and awareness need to continue even after you've started to make changes. You could virtually select items to your basket. Albert Szent-Gyorgy, People are not afraid of change. It deliberately forgoes obvious approaches in favor of oblique or unexpected ones. 3. It's built on the observation that we often lean towards straightforward . Lean Thinking is a business methodology based on the history of Japanese manufacturing techniques which have been applied worldwide within many types of industries. Lateral thinking is related to creative problem solving and critical thinking, all valuable skills to have, and [] Innovation also calls for cross-organisational and even cross-industry combinations, as seen in the merger of Swiss watch manufacturers ASUAG and SSIG to create Swatch, or the collaboration between Mercedes and Swatch to create the Smart city car. Do frequent, small changes that aren't as risky and see if those can be successful. Lateral thinking has to be distinguished from critical thinking. Creativity in retail is increasingly about building added value into existing product or creating extra products and services to support the proposition. Critics have characterized lateral thinking as a pseudo-scientific concept, arguing de Bono's core ideas have never been rigorously tested or corroborated.[4]. Last month, Waitrose was named best supermarket at the Which? Our targetjobs careers expert defines lateral thinking. Camberley Deep probing and open-ended questioning, sometimes assisted by external consultants, help unearth unquestioned assumptions about industry structure, business rules, and problem statements. Services. Companies should hire lateral thinkers, who can be spotted by the kinds of creative hobbies they have, and have demonstrated experience in risk taking and even failing. Dune shoes, Aspinal leather, Jamies Italian and Nandos all figure permanently, while pop-up stores, such as Havianas and Cath Kidston, can also be found. Copyright 2022 Centaur Media plc and / or its subsidiaries and licensors. Lateral thinking is the ability to use your imagination to look at a problem in a fresh way and come up with a new solution. It's OK if it doesn't always pan out to be great. Lateral and creative thinking work hand-in-hand with critical thinking as we solve problems. These examples show that innovation can be tactical or strategic, a one-off stunt or a mass-market campaign. 2. The purpose of movement techniques is to produce as many alternatives as possible in order to encourage new ways of thinking about both problems and solutions. Looking for a comprehensive review of BambooHR in 2023? Lateral thinking simply means finding solutions with unconventional logic or reasoning that might not be easy to see initially. It is the ultimate expression of how marketing can influence the strategic direction of a brand. Then you need to explain how you thought creatively to come up with a fix or solution combining Paul cites other successful rulebreakers like Heinz (squeezable ketchup bottles), IBM PC (open system instead of proprietary), Dell (direct PC sales), USA Today newspaper (national; colourful), Tesla (open access to electric car patents), and GoldCorp (open access to geo data for drilling options). Some organisations have innovation challenges, and seek suggestions to solve problems. Topps Tiles is a large, out-of-town tiling and wood flooring brand. The only common link is that in every case innovation made the advertising more effective. Tescos innovation team aims to go from initial idea to a minimum viable product within six weeks. All rights reserved. Heres why, Cloud platform spotlight: The top three contenders, Information security incident reporting policy, Windows administrators PowerShell script kit (Part 2). This tool systematically expands the range and number of concepts in order to end up with a very broad range of ideas to consider.[9]. Running low on cash and needing to come up with a way to make more. The production of alternatives tends to produce many possible solutions to problems that seemed to only have one possible solution. Future jobs in demand: graduate career prospects for the coming years, Graduate covering letters for civil engineering, construction and quantity surveying jobs, Retail, business & commercial services One store is even experimenting with letting customers walk out of the store in full outfits for a few hours without paying to see if they can find alternatives they prefer elsewhere. Its also a lot easier on your nerves to be asked to come up with an example of lateral thinking of your own choice, rather than to be put on the spot by an How do you cope when youre up against a challenge youve never previously experienced? A second ploy that can help you to think of solutions more laterally is to give some consideration to ideas that you would normally filter out straight away. While TrustFord cannot affect the core Ford product, it can implement innovations the latter has put in place, such as in-showroom car customisation and the creation of personalised telematics services. So what do these two roles now mean? 2. UK, Phone: +44(0)7831.112321 PURPOSE When you evaluate cloud platforms, you need to compare features, costs, benefits, limitations and implementation details. 2X2 matrices can be used to evaluate risk and reward, as well as business impact and implementation effort. But it is anchored entirely in customer insight and born of customer trends. + Keeping content fresh is about responding to customer needs. Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. Dick Brown, Every organisation has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does. Peter Drucker, The best assumption to have is that any commonly-held belief is wrong. Check out our detailed analysis of BambooHR's features, pricing, pros, and cons to see if it's the right HR solution for your business. A Psychologist Reveals 3 Signs You Should Walk Away From Someone Fast. Forums are available to all registered TechRepublic members. De Bono gives an example of considering river pollution and setting up the provocation, "the factory is downstream of itself", causing a factory to be forced to take its water input from a point downstream of its output, an idea which later became law in some countries. (TechRepublic Premiums first Windows administrators PowerShell script kit can be found here.) [9], Ideas carry out concepts. For example, kids often think laterally with ease, because they don't have as much experience or as many rules dictating what "should" be. Its a design-led marketplace and its difficult to see what is going to suit someones home by just going online, says commercial director Brian Linnington. Ken Olson, It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. Tesco (better, simpler, cheaper), and GSK (35 gates). For leaders and entrepreneurs, it means taking a creative leap and foraying into areas that . They fear the unknown. problem solving These do not merely provide sat-nav and in car radio but perform running diagnostics of the cars performance post-purchase and encourage a dialogue between dealer and customer when servicing is required. But with practice, this way of thinking can be worked on prior to graduate job interviews. A tool which is designed to ask the question, "Why? De Bono exemplifies this through the randomly-chosen word, "nose", being applied to an office photocopier, leading to the idea that the copier could produce a lavender smell when it was low on paper.[7]. 20 Examples of Lateral Thinking - Examples Lab Theyre doing research before coming in and are ready to challenge us with facts and figures. A difficult customer at work, or disagreement with a landlord. Why Tesco looks to Bangalore for lateral thinking - TechRepublic Some rule-breaking can initially seem counterintuitive or even controversial, eg. As you prepare for your interview, think about real-life problems that youve overcome. 5 Mental Health Powers Every Entrepreneur Can Develop, One Company Will Pay You to Enjoy It Rain or Shine, Scheme That Caused Her to Lose Her Home of 3 Decades, 15 Best Entrepreneurial Conferences You Need to Attend. Examples include the Jacuzzi (initially for arthritis patients, then positioned as a luxury item), 3M (Post-It), Pfizer (Viagra), and Hondas early forays into the US market (from small city motorcycles to high-powered highway bikes). Any graduate who takes up a management role is likely to need to draw on lateral thinking skills to solve problems and take forward the work of the team. The third edition of his book is packed with checklists and examples of business creativity (though the reading section could do with more recent updates). I put the packet back on the shelf as I already struggle with the amount of waste generated through my weekly food shop (knowing the plastic packaging will go in the bin a few days later) and with this additional plastic I couldnt justify the extra waste. Validated testing has been practiced by companies like Threadless (consumer voting) and Gustin (pledge to buy before making). For example, if youve been involved with a student society that was struggling financially, a logical solution to the problem might be to seek to cut costs. Enterprise There are 3 types of enterprise: Blue sky thinking, Lateral Thinking and Chance and Serendipity. Your email address will not be published. This helps create a sense of empowerment and trust. As Chief Customer Officer, Ted Pawela is responsible for engaging with all users within the Altium 365 ecosystem and for driving brand loyalty fundamental to the pursuit of Altiums industry transformation agenda. Amazon has had a string of successful innovations in a wide range of sectors, despite occasional flops like the Fire phone. Boots Find me a model partnership redefined the concept of media promotion. 5, Accounting & finance Such measures could be the number of new products, percentage of revenue generated from them, or new strategic partnerships. Retail can make a positive difference about how people view the airport, says Gatwicks head of retail, Spencer Sheen. Customers and consultants are also good sources of ideas, though customers may be better at suggesting improvements than radical new products. To be clear, lateral thinking doesn't have to mean you have to go all-in right off the bat. Xeim Limited, Registered in England and Wales with number 05243851 Lateral thinking techniques involve finding radically new approaches to problems. It involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic. To introduce you to PowerShell or to further your existing knowledge base TechRepublic Premium has assembled these PowerShell commands and scripts for common workstation 2023 TechnologyAdvice. Linus Pauling, It is not what we dont know that gets us into trouble. First coined by Edward De Bono in the late Sixties, the term lateral thinking has since entered the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is defined as "seeking to solve problems by unorthodox or apparently illogical methods". In April, the supermarket said it would shift its communications to focus on inspiring people rather than selling to them. a lateral thinker with an inquisitive mind and motivated to make change things for . It is ultimately a mindset - a way of viewing the world - that aims to handle work in a Lean manner. In my opinion, it had a simple choice: be radical and risk failing or be conventional and definitely fail. Not all of them will be appropriate to the problem. Apr 13, 2021. It is what we think we know for sure. James Thurber, You cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction. My company is a good example of how lateral thinking can boost a business in the real world. The best ideas are selected and moved rapidly into concept development. Lateral thinking involves solving problems through an indirect and creative approach. A person uses lateral thinking to move from one known idea to new ideas. Marketers that still believe this need to think again. 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Glei, The Floatation Tank: a Short Cut to Your Superpower? We broke apart what normally gets centralized and put everybody in new business units or product lines. It's all about using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. They know how to get better, but they dont know how to get different. But there may be one or two potential solutions that you otherwise wouldve discarded immediately. Among the lessons below: the brilliance of a "treasure hunt merchandising philosophy.". Browse our huge collection of tech white papers, case studies, downloads, and other resources here. Our entire collection is available to all registered TechRepublic members. The goal is to be able to challenge anything at all, not those that are problematic. Today fierce competition for revenue has forced even the most conservative media owners to innovate. We have ultimate control over what we talk about. Paul cites a cosmetics company, which received employee ideas for increasing toothpaste sales (increase the diameter of the hole) and shampoo (add the word repeat in the instructions). De Bono cites the Judgment of Solomon as an example of lateral thinking, where King Solomon resolves a dispute over the parentage of a child by calling for the child to be cut in half, and making his judgment according to the reactions that this order receives. Tesco faces some tough competition in the retail marketplace. Some ideas should be revisited later though they may not be immediately feasible. We have had to ask ourselves how we work with that. Introduction. 3, 'Give an example of your lateral thinking.' As for advertisers and agencies, the latest report would I suggest read could do better. When GSK sold Lucozade and Ribena to Suntory, the new entitys UK & Ireland marketing director Carol Robert was at the heart of the process. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Does Creativity Make You Happy? Remote Work Skeptics Are Forgetting Their Most Valuable Asset: Their Customers. This helps go beyond the obvious and easy ideas, Paul explains. I use cookies to give you the best experience on this website. Lateral thinking, according to Bono, is the process of using the information to spark creativity and transform perceptions through restructuring. Why Tesco looks to Bangalore for lateral thinking by Saritha Rai in CIO Insights , in CXO on June 14, 2010, 9:27 PM PST Low-cost innovation and quirky ideas help power Tesco's India operation. Welcome the unexpected, Paul advises. Lateral & Creative Thinking | Educational Planning - Lumen Learning Nothing turns a concept into reality faster than a prototype, Paul observes. [1] To understand lateral thinking, it is necessary to compare lateral thinking and critical thinking. The product is already available in many different places but it spins the positive. Its I like that but I also like this is in reference to Aldis unfamiliar but invariably significantly cheaper lookalike products. Required fields are marked *. There is a visualiser online that is an important part of putting a look together. Leaders need to set a clear purpose and vision for the organisation and the contribution of innovation, based on which strategy, values and organisational culture are built. Paul recommends that a mix of individual and group voting should be used, with a combination of silent and open methods. We've got you covered! Watch TechRepublic's videos of the hottest IT events and products, interviews with tech experts and innovators, and how-to tutorials here. 3. Both are part of marketing yet separate. 10, Law solicitors The exciting thing about retail is the speed from making a decision to taking it to market. It is this moment of surprise, generating laughter and new insight, which facilitates the ability to see a different thought pattern which initially was not obvious. Mattel has used cross-functional groups to come up with new toy designs, not just the regular designers. It helps create alignment towards a shared goal. Tricky graduate interview question. Without employees putting lateral thinking skills into practice, companies cant innovate and create new products theyre just stuck with doing the same old thing, perhaps more efficiently than before, but they wont be able to lead the way. We cant undercut our retailers so we have to think creatively, says Dicks. Register today, its free! Tricky graduate interview question, 'Give an example of a time when you showed initiative.' Awards because it performed consistently highly for its online and in-store offerings. Copyright 2022 Centaur Media plc and / or its subsidiaries and licensors. [8] Provocations can be set up by the use of any of the provocation techniqueswishful thinking, exaggeration, reversal, escape, distortion, or arising. Can you give us an example of a difficult situation where you had to think laterally to get out of it? is actually two questions in one.

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