Lateral Thinking for Management

Creativity is so essential a part of management equipment that it can no longer be left to chance or to the gifted amateur.

Pioneer in the use of lateral thinking, Edward de Bono shows here how he sees creativity and lateral thinking working together in the process of management to develop new products and new ideas; and to generate new approaches to problem-solving, organization and future alternatives in planning.

By removing the mystique of creativity and learning to treat it as a definitive process which can be learned, practised and used with the aid of specific techniques, he demonstrates how traditional education and management methods (which focus on logical sequential methods) can be brought together to achieve astonishing results.

1. Lateral and vertical thinking
2. The behavior of a patterning system
3. What can one do about thinking?
4. Basic principles of lateral thinking
5. Techniques Group I: Recognizing current ideas
6. Techniques Group II: Changing ideas by avoidance
7. Judgement, evaluation, criticism, and the use of NO
8. Change and discontinuity
9. Techniques Group III: Change from within
10. Techniques Group IV: Change from outside: Discontinuity methods
11. Techniques Group V: Change from outside: Deliberate introduction of discontinuity
12. Formal settings for lateral thinking
13. PO
14. Training in lateral thinking
15. Who needs lateral thinking?
16. The dangers of creativity
17. Summary

An old book which is still valid. If you want some control over your creative thinking, it is perfect.