【Lateral Thinking】Ideas solve multiple problems at once

In a nutshell

1. The age of rampant ideas. With the advent of design thinking, the word "brainstorming" has become commonplace, and garbage ideas are rampant.
2. Only a handful of ideas are excellent. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo's Mario, "An idea is something that solves multiple problems at once."
3. Lateral thinking is more likely to produce excellent ideas than logical thinking. Let's practice by reading "The Art of Deception."

The downside of design thinking: the proliferation of garbage ideas

The trend created by IDEO, design thinking, has given birth to a new way of calling any meeting a brainstorm.

Brainstorming originally requires that ideas be distilled through a proper process, but the brainstorming meetings I often see tend to end up as just a waste of Post-it notes.

To make the most of an idea, you need another skill.

And so, the garbage ideas born into the world will never see the light of day and will disappear from people's memories.

Design thinking will not be effective unless it goes through a rigorous process.

In the end, I can't help but suspect that the only ones who are successful at being prolific with ideas are IDEO and nendo.

An idea is a knot that solves multiple problems

First of all, it is wrong to think that you can come up with an idea in 1-2 hours.

It takes time.

Even the timeless classic "A Technique for Producing Ideas" says that ideas are combinations.

An idea is a new combination of existing elements.

This book suggests a method for generating ideas: "Forget about the idea egg until it hatches, and find an unexpected combination." You wait patiently until a combination that you couldn't have thought of yourself is born.

There is an anecdote that Soichiro Honda of the automobile manufacturer Honda Giken would lock himself in a pitch-black room with a single candle for several days until an idea was born.

In Roberto Verganti's "Overcrowded," he dismisses people's expectations of conventional design thinking. Citing examples such as Airbnb and the Nescafé Ambassador, he recommends that beloved products and services have a new meaning that goes beyond common sense, and that you should thoroughly hammer it out with a healthy critical spirit until you find that meaning. An idea is not born in a day.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo's Mario, said, "An idea is something that solves multiple problems at once."

I think it's the same with anything, but
when you're making something,
there's always the problem of
"if you try to please one person, you'll displease another."
So, for anything,
there's the choice of
"if you do this, it will be better"
"if you do this, it will be worse."
But in reality, when you're making a product,
it's almost never the case that you're in the blessed state of
"there's only one thing that's bothering me."
There are many things that are bothering you here and there.
That's not just for products,
but also for organizations and interpersonal relationships.


In response to those things,
even if you just improve one thing by saying,
"This is because of this, so you should do this,"
you can't move the whole thing forward.
Even if you make an effort to improve one thing,
there will be some kind of side effect,
and things that were going well before
may not go well anymore.
So, in meetings where we're brainstorming ideas,
when we're discussing
"What should we do about this problem?"
of course, many different people will say many different things,
but usually, that only solves one problem,
and it doesn't solve any other problems.
In other words, you only move forward as much as you sweat.

And, to get back to the topic of games, in many cases,
you're struggling because it's not interesting enough.
Of course, the moreネタ (material) you have, the more
interesting it will be, and people will be more satisfied.
But on the other hand, the amount of
personnel and time allocated to making it is finite.
You can't solve it by being told
"the more the better" within a finite amount.
But sometimes, if you do just one thing,
that gets better, and this gets better,
and it even solves problems you didn't expect,
there are times like that.

Practice generating ideas with lateral thinking

So how do you generate ideas?

There is something called lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is a way of thinking that removes the constraints of ideas for existing problems and solves them with a kind of witty approach.

Lateral thinking requires training, and you need to consciously seal off the logical thinking within you. You need to practice removing the constraint of the inner voice that says, "That's difficult from a common-sense perspective."

Brainstorming in design thinking originally has that meaning, but brainstorming is not something that can be done easily. Brainstorming requires the skill of lateral thinking.

Lateral thinking solves problems in unexpected ways. In response to the problem of long lines at the suica ticket gates due to long calculation times, lateral thinking solved it with the approach of "making the automatic ticket gates longer." Normally, you would try to improve the calculation time by reviewing the program.

To practice lateral thinking, it is important to first cram your head with examples. For details, please refer to the book below. It is packed with various approaches that make you conscious of lateral thinking.

Aside

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