6 THINKING HATS - Green

STYLE : Growth, Fertility

FOCUS : Ideas, Creativity & Lateral Thinking

QUESTIONS : 

• Let’s think “outside the box.” 
• What are some fresh ideas or approaches? This is the time for any wild or crazy or “far out” idea. 
• What are all of our alternatives here? 
• Aren’t there some other alternatives . . . perhaps too outside the box? 
• This idea won’t work in its present form, but can we shape it or adapt it so that it might be usable? 
• We’ve always done it this way; let’s “green hat” it . . .does it have to be done this way?

KEY POINTS

This is where you generate new, innovative ideas and develop creative solutions to a problem. It is freewheeling way of thinking in which there is little criticism of ideas, and “movement” is made using provocation to move “forward with an idea or from an idea” seeking alternative solutions. Green Hat thinking must involve shaping the idea for the user or “buyer”.

The green hat is specifically concerned with creating new
ideas and new ways of looking at things:
• creative thinking
• Additional alternatives
• putting forward possibilities and hypotheses
• interesting proposals
• new approaches
• provocations and changes
The green hat makes time and space available to focus on
creative thinking. Even if no creative ideas are
forthcoming, the green hat asks for the creative effort.
Often green hat thinking is difficult because it goes
against our habits of recognition, judgment and criticism.