The seed that made Lateral sprout was a study by the scientist George Land. He found that 98% of five-year-olds in the USA were geniuses at solving problems in imaginative and unconventional ways. But 10 years later, only 10% kept this genius and by age 26, only 2%. The reason? The way we’ve been taught to think.

So we asked ourselves a big question. Why were 2% of people able to hold onto their creative genius despite the old educational system? The answer, we found, lies within each of us. Our individuality. How we think, imagine and create in our own remarkable and distinctive ways. And when we stimulate our individuality, consciously and deliberately, we hold onto it.

Out of this Lateral was born. To help recover some of our lost genius. To help our education systems bring out our individuality. To help skill up our workforces to find jobs in a technological world. And to change how we think so we can find new ways of living together.