Lateral Thinking for Every Day

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The founding of Google

Lateral thinking involves trying new approaches, borrowing ideas from other places, asking ‘What if’ questions and recognizing when you have stumbled on something interesting.

In 1973 Carl and Gloria Page, who both worked at Michigan State University, had a son. Carl was a Professor of Computer Science and Gloria taught programming. They called their son Lawrence, but he was known as Larry. At the age of six the boy was given a home computer, one of the very first models, and soon he was programming. Larry was a precocious child and went on to study business and computer science at his parent’s university. He then applied to MIT but was rejected so instead he went to Stanford, which proved a happy choice. It was during ...