Chapter 26 5. Use a lateral approach to problem solving

If you are an employee of a movie company, and now the company is going to open a new movie theater in another city, I will arrange for you to do one thing: help the company find the most suitable place to open a movie theater within one to two days .Are you sure you'll find it in such a short time? As we all know, the experience of opening a movie theater is the same as that of opening a store: the first is the location, the second is the location, and the third is the location.Why is location so important?Because, for shops and movie theaters to thrive, they first need to be popular.If you want to be popular, you must choose a location in a place with a lot of people and strong spending power.

Many people face such problems, and it is easy to solve them by measuring the flow of people based on conventional thinking. The most direct method (forward method) is to send people to conduct on-the-spot inspections everywhere every day, but this requires a lot of time. Time and energy, it is impossible to get results in a short period of time.Another way is to invite a special survey company to do the survey, which will definitely cost a lot.Besides these two methods, is there any better way? A senior manager of a Japanese film company encountered such a problem.But he only used a very simple method, and he easily solved the problem.

How did he do it?Lead your subordinates to investigate all the police stations in the city where the movie theater will be opened.The goal of the survey is very simple: Whichever place loses the most wallets usually, and then choose the place where the most wallets are lost to open a movie theater. It turned out that this choice was simply right, and this movie theater became the most popular among the many movie theaters opened by the movie company. What is the rationale for this choice?Because the place where the most wallets are lost is the place with the largest flow of people and the most vigorous consumption activities.

The method used by this executive is lateral thinking.Its specific method is: when thinking about a problem, not from a positive perspective, but from an unexpected side to think and solve the problem. So, what are the specific ways of lateral thinking? (1) Looking for associations from the side Sometimes finding a connection is the key to solving a problem.If you find it from the front, or it is too strenuous, or there are other inconveniences, you might as well try to find it from the side. Let’s look at the idea used in the example of opening a movie theater to find a police station to investigate:

(1) Target: the ideal place with the most people. (2) The performance of places with the most crowds: A. crowded; B. crowded; C. noisy; D. easy to drop things; E. other (3) Get rid of other aspects of performance, and only choose one important aspect: easy to drop things. (4) Where can I know which police station is most likely to drop things. In this way, if you follow the vine from the side, the problem will be solved soon. (2) Highlight the excitement point from the side Whether it is selling products or promoting yourself, the most important thing is to attract people.And to attract people, you need to highlight the excitement.Sometimes it is difficult to highlight the exciting point from the front, but if it is done from the side, the effect may be completely different.

Somerset Maugham is a famous British writer.Before he became famous, his life was very difficult, and the books he wrote could not be sold.Later, he thought of a way and placed an advertisement in one of the most famous newspapers: I am a young, educated millionaire with a wide range of hobbies, and I hope to find a woman who is the same as the heroine in Maugham's novels marry. As a result, Maugham's novels were quickly sold out. It is a positive approach to directly publicize the value of the book itself if the book cannot be sold, but it may be thankless.So let’s make a fuss from the side: How attractive is Maugham’s novel to stimulate people’s excitement through an advertisement of a millionaire asking for marriage, so that this young millionaire actually uses the characters in it as a criterion for choosing a mate?So, driven by curiosity, everyone bought Maugham's novels one after another.

It was supposed to be an advertisement for selling books, but it turned out to be realized through a marriage advertisement.This is the charm of sideways! (3) Looking for value from the side When everyone is focusing on the positive value of a certain thing, that is, the main value, if you pay attention to the side value related to it, you may be able to dig out unique opportunities from it. In the mid-nineteenth century, there was a gold rush in California, USA, and people flocked to it.Some people got rich, but many people lost everything.There was a young man named Yamer who originally came to pan for gold, but a chance made him discover that it was very difficult to drink water here.With a discerning eye, he immediately realized that this was a great business opportunity, so he gave up panning for gold and started selling cold water instead.

When he first started making it, someone laughed at him and said: It’s really ridiculous to come here from all the way to pick sesame seeds instead of watermelon.But he was unmoved, and finally earned six thousand dollars by selling water in a short period of time.When many gold diggers were still starving, he had already completed the accumulation of primitive capital.Later, he became a well-known business tycoon in the United States. This is to find value from the side.The lateral protruding of value often embodies a kind of chicken and dog law, one person attains the Tao, and the chicken and dog ascend to heaven, that is, the main aspect value is obvious, and the side value depends on the main value.But the key to lateral protruding is still protruding, that is, to fully tap and develop the unique lateral value.

(4) Seeking a breakthrough from the side of Sezhengtong Blocking the Zhengtong side means deliberately not going the right way, blocking the possibility of going the right way, but opening a way sideways to achieve a more ideal effect. In the 1940s, the US company Cerrocus produced the world's first desktop copier, and the founder of the company, Wilson, applied for a patent for this.At that time, there was a great demand for this kind of copier in the society, but Wilson did not adopt the conventional sales method, but came up with a strange trick: Although the cost of the copier was only $2,400, the price tag was as high as $29,500, which clearly blocked sales.The purpose of blocking the road to sales is of course not to block the road to profit, but to rent out.As a result, the copier business quickly expanded to all parts of the country.Later, the company's business became bigger and bigger, and the production of copiers became easier and simpler with the improvement of technology. Only then did the company reset the price acceptable to everyone and start to sell in large quantities.

(5) Two main points The key to developing lateral thinking ability lies in two points: (1) Cultivate the habit of thinking in a roundabout way, forcibly twisting your thinking to a place where you don't want to hit the eye, and forcing yourself to think from the side.Napoleon has a famous saying: I never attack a position that can be turned around.Lateral thinking often requires beating around the bush.Therefore, whether you can develop the habit of roundabout thinking is the key to effective lateral thinking. (2) Grasp the dialectic of strength and weakness.It requires that even in the case of an obvious positive way, it is necessary to forcibly turn the thinking to the side, turning to the supporting role of the secondary part that is not eye-catching.This actually reflects a dialectic of strength and weakness.We can describe the dialectical relationship in many ways: the supporting role is the leading role, the minor part is the important part, the non-obtrusive part is the critical part, the detour is the shortcut, the fork is the right path, the incidental effect is the maximum effect, and so on.

All changes in strength and weakness are accompanied by a process of implicit and explicit conversion.That is to say, all the strong protagonists' eyes, heavy shortcuts and maximum effects are hidden at the beginning, and only at the end can they feel the uniqueness, and even make people amazed that I didn't expect it.