Innovation and Lateral Thinking

Business Lift

In Business Innovation Posted July 17, 2017

A number of years ago at a conference in Amsterdam I had the privilege to meet Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. At the time Michael was a Melbourne-based author, motivational speaker and cognitive scientist, whose research has been in designing human thinking strategies and what he calls ‘software for the brain’. In 1979, he co-founded the School of Thinking in New York City with Dr Edward de Bono and in 1980, Dr de Bono was Michael’s tutor for the world’s first PhD in Lateral Thinking. He has also advised business greats such as Jack Welch, Chairman of General Electric. I was awarded a Certificate in Lateral Thinking for attending.

Michael taught the attendees of his workshop his formula for innovative and lateral thinking in business. 

The formula goes like this…

CVS x 10 = BVS

CVS to BVS:
CVS is the Current View of the Situation, BVS is the Better View of the Situation. BVS comes above when we ask ourselves what would happen if the CVS was multiplied by 10 or even 100, what would we do, what would need to happen in order to deal with this increase? For example, if you were to receive 10 times more emails than you currently do – how would you handle them? What about 10 times more enquiries or 10 times more sales leads?

To quote Michael, “CVS to BVS is what I call a thinking switch. It means that the current view of the situation (CVS) can never be equal to the better view of the situation (BVS).

GBB:
Michael also discussed the concept of GBB, being Good, Bad, Better. Have you ever been in a meeting where someone has presented an idea (maybe even you) and got emotionally attached to it? Despite everyone being able to conclude that the idea has some faults – the person presenting the idea persisted with saying it was good? The idea behind GBB is to detach people emotionally from their ideas, with the intention that everyone will be free to share without feeling hurt should their idea not get up. It makes for much better, more engaged and free flowing brainstorming, that’s for sure.

The way to use the GBB idea is to have people present the Good and the Bad about their ideas, and then the team together work out what the Better situation could be given the Good and Bad of the idea. It makes for great discussion and real innovation is able to follow. 

We used it often in my former business Milestone Financial Services P/L. Given Milestone was awarded three National Innovation Awards I guess that’s proof enough that these ideas work in the real world, and can work in your business.

To Your Innovation Success,
Darren Laudenbach – The Business LIFT