Edward de Bono, inventor of the idea and term lateral thinking, suggested we need to create a new type of statement, a statement that is neither true nor false, but exists purely to provoke other thoughts and ideas–anything coming out of President Trump might qualify 8D

He called such a statement a “Po” statement, even wrote a short book about it titled Po: Beyond Yes and No. (Out-of-print, rare)

By itself, a provocative statement might be total nonsense (Po: Cars have square wheels). But the point is to consider the statement anyway, to think about it and see what new ideas it provokes. The Po statement becomes a stepping stone to new ideas we might not have arrived at any other way.

In the case “Po: cars have square wheels,” that statement actually led some engineers to consider a track composed of parallel rollers. If you place a car with the square wheels on a track of rollers of the right size, you could actually get a very smooth ride. Indeed, this new idea was used in industrial setting at one point–who’d of thought?

Photo by Impact Hub


Decaf

Curator of whatever tickles my neurons. "Most problems are created not by circumstances but by a particular perception of them." ~ Edward de Bono "Play is the highest form of research." ~ Albert Einstein "All models are wrong; some models are useful." ~ George Box