Lateral Thinking and Intuition

Abstract

Humans create a frame of mind through social lives. This mind’s frame makes life easy, fast and efficient. But this frame neglects the data that does not match with it, so the mind sticks to the original frame. After the digital revolution, the world has had several dramatic changes. This requires lateral thinking to solve new confronting problems and take advantage of new arising opportunities. From the history of inventions and innovations, all of them are born out of lateral thinking, that can be classified into 7 types and the latter 4 types are lateral thinking caused by the work of an intuitive mind which involves gut feeling and hunch, outside the command of the conscious awareness. The intuition of experts are like ‘signposts’ to the answers. After the problem elements are rearranged and some random data is added, intuition becomes insight sent to the analytical mind, which is under the command of the consciousness. Every step to the solution can be rationally explained. Teaching students to be able to think outside the box must create an incubation period for learners to develop their informed intuition.