Developing a New Major

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diffs between lateral and vertical thinking – ch2

vertical is selective (looking for the one right answer, other answers other paths are excluded, want the one best way of looking at a problem),  lateral is generative (open up more paths to the problem solution generate as many alternative approaches as you can even after some start to look promsising

vertical is analytical, lateral is provocative (not sure what this means – i think they mean provocative in terms of can ask more questions, can use lateral thinking on the different results

vertical is sequential (move forward in analysis one step at a time and every step is connected and the soundness of each step means the conclusion will be sound), lateral makes jumps (can jump ahead and come back later and fill in the gaps, conclusion can be sound even if there was no good reason for trying it and sometimes once you’ve seen the end you can see the logical steps that get ya from the beginning to hte end – their example – sometime you ahve to be on the mountain top awhile to see the best way to get there

vertical has to be correct at every step (like math and logic), lateral doesn’t have to be correct every step of the way (more trial and error)

vertical uses wrong to cut off avenues that seem like they won’t work, lateral has no wrong pathways because total frame of reference might change in teh future

vertical elminates the irrelevant (perpetuates the current thinking because nothing new is included), lateral looks for opportunities to bring in stray bits of info (because they might be related in the future and because they might change the frame of reference, get ya to think about the seemingly main info bits differently)

vertical has fixed classifications & labels (goes along with using current thinking – so ya use current labels too, rigid preset definitions), lateral changes labels (as thinking patterns change – so do labels)

vertical follows most likely path, lateral follows least likely path (gotta be willing to explore least obvious ideas even when there is no real proff (at the time) that there is any reason to do this exploring or that it will pay off with anything of worth

no guarantee that you will get an answer with lateral – that’s the goal but might not find it – but the payoff can be huge because ya get idea repatterning, new ways of thinking

vertical thinking uses info for its own sake to move solution finding process forward

lateral uses info to bring about new patterns

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