Great Innovators Think Laterally – Ian Gonsher and Deb Mills-Scofield – Harvard Business Review:
Often, when searching for a new way to understand a familiar idea, we look for its opposite. By doing this, we create a spectrum of possibilities between what it is and what it is not. This strategy is somewhat similar to what is often referred to as the Hegelian Dialectic, although Hegel himself probably never used this term, or its familiar formula: Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis: Thesis is a proposition about a prevalent paradigm; e.g. a horse and carriage; Antithesis is a counter proposition that opposes or negates the Thesis; e.g. the first generation of automobiles called "horseless carriages"; Synthesis emerges from the tension between the Thesis and the Antithesis, blending the opposing ideas without fully negating either of them completely; e.g. our modern understanding of the car.