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What is "lateral thinking"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
lateral thinking
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And that very excess of safety inspired some bright Vadinamians in to a galaxy-class piece of lateral thinking.
▪ Arrangement of ideas on the board provides a stimulus for new ideas and lateral thinking. 4.
▪ It can be immensely useful - and that is what is looked for with lateral thinking - or it can be false.
▪ It was a peculiar form of lateral thinking, inspired by instinct.
▪ Others include lateral thinking, straight and crooked thinking, potential problem analysis, rational decision-making, and so on.
▪ Post-war lateral thinking solved the problem by abolishing the school, but the building survived that, too.
▪ So a little lateral thinking was called for.
▪ The model represents most of de Bono's ideas on lateral thinking.
Wiktionary
lateral thinking

n. Using reasoned thought in a non-standard, or non-linear logical, way to find a solution to a problem.

WordNet
lateral thinking

n. a heuristic for solving problems; you try to look at the problem from many angles instead of tackling it head-on

Wikipedia
Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono.

According to de Bono, lateral thinking deliberately distances itself from standard perceptions of creativity as either "vertical" logic (the classic method for problem solving: working out the solution step-by-step from the given data) or "horizontal" imagination (having many ideas but being unconcerned with the detailed implementation of them).