When we are buried in the details of our work, it’s hard to look around and see connections to worlds outside ourselves. We can be talking to the same people within our crowd, read the same blogs, and look at the world through a myopic lens.
Some of the big ideas of today such as taking software platforms, connectivity, mobile and cars can produce inventions like Lyft.
A company like Stripe took their expertise in coding and made connections into financial tech and banking. It was daunting, but rewarding as they brought their lateral thinking to the problem of making online payments easier.
If you straddle different worlds, know the culture and nuances of different segments, you can powerfully introduce solutions that connect the dots that might escape a specialist’s trained mind. Lateral thinking is value add in this increasingly complex and polarized world. There’s extreme efficiency and speed occurring on one end of the spectrum. On the other end, there’s high complexity which requires creative, consultative solutions.
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Bringing outside, fresh perspectives can change the way a problem is solved. If you are a lateral thinker, you can open up the conversation to new possibilities.
You can notice and exercise a few approaches in your work and interactions:
- Be sure to play in different worlds deeply rather than invest fully into one area of work day in and day out.
- Meet new and interesting people that think about their fields intensely. Ask great questions and learn.
- Keep great notes and think of how new perspectives create new solutions for your problems. Test them out and see what comes of trying different approaches. Then share them to help others.
If you can connect the dots you become valuable to others that are conventional in their practice. Your contribution increases.
Think about your domains you invest in. How can they merge or collide in a way to create even more value?
The world is getting more efficient on the whole. But, the creativity and lateral thinking opportunity is there to be applied to multiply those efficiencies.
