Breaking Through Management Challenges with "Lateral Thinking x PR" to Shift Stereotypes | Recommendations for PR-style Lateral Thinking #1

What is missing in that meeting is not ideas.What is missing is the "technique of questioning premises."

In many meetings, tactics such as "how to sell," "how to spread the word," and "how to improve" are discussed. Of course, these are important. However, there are times when what should be asked before that is left behind.

To begin with, what are we viewing as the problem?
Whose discomfort are we trying to resolve, and what kind of discomfort is it?
Which relationships are fixed, and which voices are becoming invisible?

If you only increase the number of tactics without questioning these premises, the discussion is likely to remain limited to optimization within the existing framework.

The "lateral thinking" I will introduce this time is a thinking technique for shifting those premises.

Shift the premises of the challenge, in other words, the stereotypes.
Update the questions.
Change the very contours of the visible relationships.
By doing so, it is a method to find breakthroughs that were previously invisible.

This series, "Recommendations for PR-style Lateral Thinking," is the practical application of the "Contextual Auxiliary Lines" series.

In the previous series, we redefined management challenges as design failures of "questions" and "relationships." Starting with this installment, as a practical application, I will propose "lateral thinking"—a thinking technique to shift perspectives and break through challenges—as a practical model, drawing it closer to the fields of management challenges, PR, and relationship design.

I call this"PR-style Lateral Thinking."

In this first installment, we will first consider what "lateral thinking" is. Then, we will think about what becomes visible when applying it to the practical work of PR and management challenges.

What is Lateral Thinking?

When you hear "lateral thinking," it might seem like a method that only people with particularly flexible minds can use. However, that is not actually the case.

Rather, lateral thinking is a "clue" for noticing the premises we have unconsciously set.

There is a famous episode often used when explaining lateral thinking.

■ Distributing Bananas
There are 4 bananas. You want to divide them equally among 3 people.
If you try to divide them as they are, you will inevitably have remainders. However, if you remove the premise of "maintaining their shape," the answer of "making them into juice and pouring them out equally" emerges.

■ The Driver Driving the Wrong Way
A taxi driver was driving the wrong way down a one-way street, but no one warned him. Why?
The answer is that the driver was "walking," not driving a car. Here, the premise that "because he is a driver, he must be driving" has been removed.

■ Elevator Dissatisfaction
In a high-rise building, there were successive complaints that "the elevator is slow."
Instead of updating the equipment, they installed "mirrors" so people wouldn't get bored while waiting, and the complaints dropped sharply. The problem was not the "speed" itself, but the "stress of feeling like you are being made to wait."

What changed in these examples was not the answer.
It was the way the problem was posed.And this change in how it is posed is the core of lateral thinking.

The person known for presenting this way of thinking as a method and popularizing it widely is Edward de Bono, a physician and author from Malta.
De Bono presentedlateral thinking as a method for moving away from existing perspectives to think in a different way.

Lateral thinking is not just about coming up with unusual ideas.
It is a thinking method that involves temporarily stepping away from existing premises and changing the way the problem itself is posed.

Why does the scenery not change even though the meeting progresses?

Why is this lateral thinking important in the fields of management and PR?
In many meetings, the first thing discussed is how to address a challenge.
"Reviewing prices," "changing the appeal," "increasing awareness," "strengthening recruitment"—none of these are wrong. In fact, they are necessary questions in practice.

However, it is rare for the focus to be placed on the questions that should have been asked before that.
"What, in the first place, are we viewing as the problem?"
"Whose discomfort are we trying to resolve, and what kind of discomfort is it?"
"What are we calling competition?"

Discussions that proceed without these questions being posed inevitably tend to be confined to optimization within the existing market.

The reason the landscape of meetings never changes is not because of a lack of creativity. In many cases, it is because"the questions are not directed outside of the premises."And this is where lateral thinking becomes effective.

Lateral thinking is a thinking technique for posing "different questions."

Lateral thinking is a method of thinking that involves temporarily removing existing frameworks and thinking apart from existing patterns and premises.
In other words,lateral thinking can be said to be a way of thinking that is concerned with posing different questions before coming up with different answers.

Not "how to sell," but "what are we selling as value in the first place?"
Not "how to win," but "what are we regarding as competition?"
Not "how to spread it," but "in what context should we place it to change its meaning?"

By shifting the position of the questions in this way, the landscape that comes into view changes for the first time.

Vertical thinking digs deep. Lateral thinking changes where you dig.

Here, it becomes easier to understand if we contrast "vertical thinking" and "lateral thinking."

Vertical thinking (logical thinking) is a "deep-digging" thinking method that logically approaches the optimal solution within given premises. This is extremely important in practice and is also the area where AI excels the most.

However, this thinking has the major premise that "the current question is valid."

On the other hand, lateral thinking questions that premise itself.
"Is the place we are digging now really the place we should be digging?"
"In the first place, hasn't this problem setting itself become outdated?"

If vertical thinking is the "power to dig deep,"
lateral thinking is the "power to change where you dig."

These two are not in conflict.
Shift the question with lateral thinking, and give it form with vertical thinking.
That back-and-forth movement is the very thinking that is indispensable in modern business..

So, what becomes visible when we apply this lateral thinking to the field of PR and management challenges?

That is what I advocate as"PR-style lateral thinking," a method for considering new contexts for solutions to existing management challenges, rather than a frontal breakthrough.

Three characteristics of "PR-style lateral thinking"

PR-style lateral thinking has three major characteristics.

1. Redefining challenges through "relationships"

We reframe various management challenges not as mere lack of measures or effort, but as 'distortions in relationships' with stakeholders.

2. Redesigning 'Context'

Before changing how information is conveyed, we transform the 'context' in which the information is placed, changing its social significance.

3. Preparing a 'Breakthrough' for Management Challenges

Rather than using direct persuasion, we create the conditions for challenges to naturally start moving through the dynamics of PR, such as empathy, trust, and engagement.

In this way, 'PR-style Lateral Thinking' is the application of lateral thinking to the essence of PR, which is 'relationship building' and 'context design'.

Before adding information, change where the meaning is placed. Before increasing measures, change how relationships are viewed. Before rushing for answers, shift the position of the question. That is the fundamental stance of PR-style lateral thinking.

Why is PR-style lateral thinking necessary for corporate management now?

There are three main reasons.

1. Because in a mature market, the 'correct answers' become homogenized.

The background to this is the evolution of information processing technology, including AI.
Due to the evolution of AI, answers derived from the organization and analysis of existing information tend to become similar (homogenized) everywhere. This is even more true in mature markets.

That is precisely why, more than the 'ability to efficiently answer given questions,' the power of conception—'what should be posed as a question'—becomes the source of differentiation.

2. Because problem setting is the starting point for complex management challenges and innovation.

In the modern business environment, challenges are intricately intertwined, making it difficult to see what the real problem is. Therefore, before rushing to find solutions, it is important to first consider how to perceive the problem itself.

This point is repeatedly discussed in research on organizational theory and innovation management.

For example, the 2025 paper 'Developing Problem Representations in Organizations' by Poornika Ananth et al. at the University of Bath, UK, shows that when organizations face complex problems, taking the following three processes instead of immediately looking for solutions leads to better results.

• problem finding: Identifying the real problem

• problem framing: Thinking about how to interpret that problem

• problem formulating: Verbalizing it into a form that can be discussed and examined

This process of setting problems is deeply connected to lateral thinking in the sense that it questions existing premises and re-examines the questions themselves.

While AI demonstrates unparalleled strength in 'processing questions,' human imagination remains essential for determining 'what should be posed as a question' in the first place.

3. Because what companies trade is not just goods or information, but meaning and relationships themselves.

How to sell a product. How to talk about a brand. What to convey as the appeal in recruitment.

These are all more than just information design. They involve questions about who you build relationships with and what kind of meaning you create.

In other words, much of corporate activity is directed more by the questions one poses than by choosing the right answers. How you pose a question defines the contours of your management and PR.

PR-style lateral thinking is 'updating premises'.

As we have seen, lateral thinking is not just a technique for 'generating ideas.' Its essence lies in 'visualizing premises and trying to remove them once.' For example, consider the following questions:

Before asking 'how to sell,' ask 'why sell it?'
Before asking 'how to win,' ask 'what are we defining as competition?'
Before asking 'how to spread it,' ask 'in what context would the meaning change?'

Let's take a famous example applied to business.

Suppose your family business is a 'candle shop.' When electricity becomes widespread and the demand for candles as household lighting disappears, how would you redefine their value?

Vertical thinking, such as 'making brighter candles,' will not beat light bulbs, and the idea will hit a dead end.

However, the moment you doubt the premise of 'are candles meant to sell brightness?', the scenery changes.
What you are selling there might not be brightness, but 'pleasant darkness' or the 'quality of quiet time'.

What is happening here is not functional improvement.
It is an update to the definition of value.

If applied to management, it means changing the playing field of strategy.
In PR terms, it means changing the placement of meaning before adding information.
From an editorial perspective, it means changing the angle before increasing the material.

In short, lateral thinking is not so much a technique for generating ideas as it is a thinking technique for updating premises.

Shifting the question = Changing how the scenery is viewed

The market does not exist there as something fixed from the beginning.

Customers, competition, and value all change in appearance depending on 'how the question is posed.' And depending on how that question is posed, a company's actions, the meaning of its brand, and the context of its PR will change dramatically.

Lateral thinking is not the power to answer existing questions well.
It is the power to change how questions are posed and shift the way the scenery is viewed.

And now, what is needed in both management and PR is perhaps not to rush for the correct answer, but to shift the question that precedes it.

In this series, we will organize this approach as "PR-Style Lateral Thinking" into a form that can be used in practical work.

Next time, we will introduce "how to train lateral thinking" that can be used in daily meetings and project planning as concrete training. Please stay tuned.