The following is excerpted from Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono: It is like having two wooden boxes side by side into which one is putting ping-pong balls. The balls have to go into one box or the other. . . . If one of the boxes is labelled “black balls” and the other one “white balls” then each ball is dropped into the appropriate box depending on whether it is black or white. If there are any grey balls then some sort of decision has to be made as to whether they go into the black box or the white box. Once the decision has been made the balls go into the white box just as if they were white or into the black box just as if they were black. The apparent nature of the ball has been shifted to make it fit in with the established pattern.… Read more →