Provocation is a lateral thinking technique. It works by disrupting established patterns of thinking and giving people new places to start in idea generation.
A key way that we think is by recognizing patterns and reacting to them. These reactions come from our past experiences, and from logical extensions of those experiences, and it's often hard to think outside these patterns. While we may know a good answer as part of a different type of problem, the structure of our brains can make it difficult for us to access this.
Provocation is a technique that can be used to make links between these patterns.
The Provocation technique was developed and popularized by psychologist Edward de Bono.
You use provocation by making deliberately wrong or unreasonable statements (provocations), in which something you take for granted about the situation isn't true.
For instance, the statements "Cars have square wheels" or "Houses have no roofs" can be provocations.
Statements need to be outrageous like this to shock your mind out of existing ways of thinking. Once you've made a provocative statement, you then suspend judgment and use that statement to generate ideas, giving you original starting points for brainstorming and creative thinking.
Understanding Provocation
Imagine you take the same route to school every day. You're so used to it that you stop noticing the scenery, and you don't even have to think about which route to take to get to campus.
We can use this as an analogy for our normal approach to brainstorming, where we habitually follow the same track, or steps when we brainstorm. This limits our creativity because any forward movement is based on the step or idea we had before.
Now, imagine that you're leaving for school and, suddenly, you're magically transported to an entirely new location. You've never been to this place before, and nothing is familiar. If this happened, you'd have to start figuring out where you were, and how you were going to take a new route to the school campus.
This is what provocation does, and it's why it can be so useful. Its purpose is to take you outside the routes that you normally think along, and put you in an entirely new place. Then, it's up to you to work back to where you want to be.
When you do this, you're addressing problems from a new perspective, and, hopefully, you'll generate new ideas.
Provocation is quite straightforward to use, although it can be challenging when you first start.
All you do is make a shocking or outrageous statement about the problem you're trying to solve. Then, you begin to work back through several further steps. The technique is most useful when your provocations are far-out. De Bono suggests that at least 40 percent of your provocations should be completely unusable. If you make "safe" statements, you won't get the full value of the technique.
Step 1: Create the Provocation
It can sometimes be difficult to come up with a provocation, simply because our brains are hard-wired to come up with sensible solutions.
One way to get started with provocations is the "escape method." Here, you make a statement that everyone takes for granted. This "take for granted" statement should be related to the problem you're trying to solve. Once you've created a taken-for-granted statement, you can then come up with a provocative statement to counter it.
Example:
Problem: Cars run out of gas after only a few hundred miles
Provocations:
Invent a car that tows a gas station behind it
Invent a car that runs on air
Make everything that the car has to drive to closer
The provocations do indeed solve the problem, however, as mentioned earlier they are not what you would consider realistic or even possible.
You may wonder then, what the point of provocations is if all they do is give you nonsense answers. While it’s true that provocations taken by themselves aren’t much help, they become valuable when coupled with movement.
Put simply, movement is what we mentally do to transform provocations into usable ideas. In movement via principle, we extract a key idea from the provocation that’s important in solving the problem. We then devise more realistic solutions based on that principle.
Step 2: Create Movement/Ideas
Once you've made a provocation, you need to imagine what would come next. This is called the "moment-to-moment" technique. Essentially, you're going to imagine, on a moment-by-moment basis, what comes next.
Example:
Provocation: Invent a car that tows a gas station
Principle: Having a gas station towed behind the car would allow a large amount of gas to always be at the car’s disposal
Solutions utilizing principle:
Tank size of cars could be increased
Invent a car/gas station system where cars could be refilled from mobile gas stations (car equivalent to in-flight refueling)
Keep in mind that as you use the moment-by-moment technique, you don't have to follow one line of thinking. You'll get the greatest value from provocation if you try to come up with several alternative ideas, stemming from your initial provocation.
There are several other ways that you can create movement and ideas from your provocation.
Examine:
The consequences of the statement.
What the benefits would be.
What special circumstances would make it a sensible solution.
The principles needed to support it and make it work.
How it would work, moment-to-moment.
What would happen if a sequence of events was changed.
The differences between the provocation and a sensible solution.
You can use this list as a checklist to help you brainstorm.
Step 3: Extract Value
Keep in mind that your goal is not to prove that your provocation is useful or justified. Your goal is to generate ideas that are separate from the provocation.
You extract value from the provocation by taking one of those ideas, and turning it into a viable solution to your problem.
Example:
in the mobile gas station example of in-flight refueling, it may feel a bit like a provocation itself. Sometimes solutions like this could be additional provocations or just feasible but radical real solutions, depending on what you view your limitations to be.
When using the provocation technique with someone else, or with a group, de Bono suggests using the word "Po." This stands for "Provocative Operation." The term is also a partial root of other words such as "possible", "hypothesis", "suppose" and "poetry" which, according to de Bono, all indicate forward movement, which is the purpose of the provocation technique.
De Bono suggests that when we make a provocative statement in public we label it as such with "Po" (for instance, "Po: the earth is flat"). "Po" acts as a signal, alerting everyone that the statement is a provocation and not one to be seriously considered. However, this does rely on all members of your audience knowing about provocation!
Example:
Po, Invent a car that tows a gas station behind it
Po, Invent a car that runs on air
Po, Make everything that the car has to drive to closer
Sources: http://www.mindtools.com