Editing Lateral thinking (section)

=== Provocation idea generation ===
{{Further|Po (lateral thinking)}}
A provocation is a statement that we know is wrong or impossible but used to create new ideas. De Bono gives an example of considering river pollution and setting up the provocation, "the factory is downstream of itself", causing a factory to be forced to take its water input from a point downstream of its output, an idea which later became law in some countries.<ref>{{Cite book |last=De Bono |first=Edward |author-link=Edward De Bono |year=1992 |title=Serious creativity: using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas |publisher=HarperBusiness |pages=145 |isbn=9780887305665 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NbB9AAAAMAAJ}}</ref> Provocations can be set up by the use of any of the [[Po (lateral thinking)|provocation techniques]]—wishful thinking, [[exaggeration]], reversal, escape, distortion, or arising. The thinker creates a list of provocations and then uses the most outlandish ones to move their thinking forward to new ideas.