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The power of 'What if?' and deliberate provocation
💡 Deliberate provocations and 'what if' hypotheticals create movement in thinking — generate ideas before you judge them.
De Bono introduces one of his signature tools: provocation. A provocation is a statement made not because it's true, but because of the movement it creates — 'What if cars had square wheels?' The point isn't the answer; it's where the idea takes you. He even coined the word 'po' to signal 'this is a provocation, judge it later.'
Applied to being interesting, provocation means offering deliberately unexpected propositions and playful hypotheticals. Instead of confirming what everyone assumes, you say 'Suppose it were the other way around…' This jolts a conversation out of its rut and invites others to think alongside you.
The key discipline is separating generating ideas from judging them. Kill an idea too early and you never reach the interesting one. Interesting people give ideas room to breathe before deciding whether they're useful.
Source: How To Be More Interesting — Edward De Bono