I love the principle behind this — that you can get to something that works without having things that are possible and would work along the way.

A stickier way of saying a similar thing is:

There is nothing more dangerous than to leap a chasm in two jumps

Lateral thinking: 3. You don’t have to be right at every step

There’s a lot of mention of lateral thinking without a whole lot of knowledge about the what and the why of it. Very often it seems that it’s just brainstorming. Here’s a short set of some of the fundamentals of lateral thinking. In this one the point really is that lateral thinking doesn’t solve things by itself, but you need both lateral and vertical thinking at different times. And they are very hard to do together because they are quite different mindsets.

As I understand it, Lateral thinking is from Edward de Bono.

Lateral thinking: 1. Lateral thinking is about increasing the breadth of options

During lateral thinking labels don’t have to clearly be one thing or another, they can be flexible. The phablet is a reasonable recent example of how existing terms and definitions can constrain on your thinking.

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Lateral thinking: 2. Labels are not collectors but signposts. They are not fixed