Spreading Activation: Divergent & Lateral Idea Networks

Idea Seed

Active seed concept

—

Thinking Mode

Divergence (spread strength) 0.55

Lateral association weight 60%

Propagation speed 6/s

Generated Ideas

Ideas active

Avg. hop distance

0.0

Novelty index (outside seed's category)

Concept Categories

How it works

Concepts sit as nodes in a semantic network. Within a category, nodes share dense strong links (weight w ≈ 0.85); a smaller set of lateral links (w ≈ 0.15–0.35) cross into unrelated categories, standing in for the remote, unusual associations that lateral thinking deliberately seeks out.

Every tick, activation a_i of node i updates by spreading-activation theory (Collins & Loftus, 1975):

a_i(t+1) = max( a_i(t)·F, max_j[ a_j(t)·w_ij·S·(L if lateral) ] )
seed node held at a = 1 every tick

F — fixed fade (0.9): an idea's activation decays unless it keeps receiving input.
S — Divergence: how far activation reaches from the seed. Low S ≈ convergent thinking (a few close associates); high S floods the network — many remote ideas stay lit at once, the hallmark of divergent thinking.
L — Lateral weight: how strongly cross-category links transmit relative to same-category links. At 0 the network behaves like ordinary convergent free-association, confined to the seed's own category; turned up, distant, "unrelated" concepts light up too — de Bono's lateral thinking made numeric.

Novelty index tracks the share of currently active concepts that live outside the seed's own category — a proxy for how much of the idea set is genuinely lateral rather than an obvious extension of the seed.

Click any node to make it the new seed and watch the activation wave re-converge around it.

Click a node to seed a new idea · drag to orbit

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