Edward de Bono (born 19 May 1933, in Malta) is a physician, author, inventor, and consultant. He originated the term lateral thinking, wrote a best selling book Six Thinking Hats and is a proponent of the deliberate teaching of thinking as a subject in schools.
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Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono was born to an aristocratic Maltese family. His father was a physician who was awarded a CBE and his mother an intellectual and journalist. He studied at St Edward's College in Malta. Nicknamed 'genius', he graduated at the age of 15. De Bono then gained a medical degree from the University of Malta. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford where he gained an M.A. degree in psychology and physiology whilst being a keen sportsman; Canoeing record (Oxford – London, 113 miles and 33 locks in 33 hours)and played Polo for Oxford University with a Handicap of 2. De Bono was the President of the Scottish Reel Club at Christchurch, Oxford. He also has a Ph.D. degree and a D.Phil. degree in Medicine from Trinity College, Cambridge, a D.Des. degree (Doctor of Design) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and an LL.D. degree from the University of Dundee. De Bono is a member of the Medical Research Society and the exclusive Athenaeum Club.
He has held faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. He is a professor at Malta, Pretoria, Central England, and Dublin City University. de Bono holds the Da Vinci Professor of Thinking chair at University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix, USA.[1] He was one of the 27 Ambassadors for the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009.[2] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2005.
De Bono was formerly married to Josephine Hall-White, with whom he has two sons (educated at Eton College and Harrow School). He divides his time between the Channel Islands and a London apartment (previous residents of which include the Victorian prime minister William Gladstone and the poet Lord Byron). The de Bono family own Cranmer Hall in Norfolk. De Bono has a considerable property portfolio; owning properties in London's Mayfair, Melbourne, Dublin, Pisa, New York and Malta. He is the owner of Chateau du Planty in the Loire Valley. He holds a reputation as a prolific private island buyer; his portfolio includes Tessera Island (Venice) and Little Green Island (Australia) as well as islands in Ireland and the Bahamas.
De Bono is of mainly Italian, German, French and Spanish descent. His ancestry is traceable to the year 862 AD. He is descended from a line of Holy Roman Emperors and numerous European royal houses ; House of Bonaparte, House of Savoy, House of Aragon, House of Rurik, House of Capet, House of Hohenstaufen, House of Babenberg, Piast dynasty, the Duchy of Burgundy and the Austrian branch of the De Rothschild family. He is also descended from Leopold III, Margrave of Austria - the patron saint of Austria. Through his ancestor Manfred, King of Sicily (mentioned in the Divine Comedy of Dante) he is related to King Juan Carlos I of Spain; Prince Carlo, Duke of Castro, heir of Manfred to the thrones of Naples and Sicily (the Two Sicilies); Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza, heir to the throne of Portugal and Duke of Braganza; and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 1969 de Bono founded the Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT) which continues to produce and promote material based on his ideas.
He has written 82 books with translations into 41 languages. He has taught his thinking methods to government agencies, corporate clients, organizations and individuals, privately or publicly in group sessions. He has started to set up the World Center for New Thinking, based in Malta, which he describes as a "kind of intellectual Red Cross".
In 1995, he created the futuristic documentary film, 2040: Possibilities by Edward de Bono, a lecture designed to prepare an audience of viewers released from a cryogenic freeze for contemporary (2040) society.
De Bono has developed a range of 'deliberate thinking techniques' - which emphasise thinking as a deliberate act.
De Bono's techniques are used in companies like IBM, DuPont. Agencies offer corporate training courses based on his techniques such as think outside the box.
Quote from The mechanism of mind - introduction:
Edward de Bono's key concept is that logical, linear and critical thinking has limitations because it is based on argumentation. The traditional critical thinking processes of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates are reductive, designed to eliminate all but the truth. In many of de Bono's books, he calls for the more important need for creative thinking as a constructive way though that is deliberately designed. In de Bono's first book, Mechanism of Mind, he wrote of the importance to disrupt the dominant patterns preferred by human brain design to facilitate potential creative abilities. Many of de Bono's speculative models from that era about how the brain worked were vindicated by later brain research.
Lateral thinking, (literally, sideways thinking) uses various acts of provocation to incite ideas that are free from previously locked assumptions. The most well-known lateral thinking technique is the "random word." Invention of the word "PO" by de Bono, (meaning Provocative Operation, also related to POetry and hyPOthesis) gives notice that what will follow isn't meant as nonsense, but intended to relate to the subject at hand. Various provocative lateral thinking actions, (such as escape, new stimuli, reversal, etc.) were designed to deliberately shift perceptional assumptions for the purpose of generating observations and insights about the subject.
Lateral Thinking is different from our normal perceptions regarding creativity and innovation, and it is even different from pure vertical logic and pure horizontal imagination:
De Bono proposes that most of the problems in thinking are perceptual. Many more mistakes are made by jumping to the wrong conclusion too soon than by thinking irrationally once factors are known.
Edward de Bono held that "Operacy" is key, (another new word he has coined, related to literacy and numeracy.) Creativity should be producible on demand. Formation and design from new ideas cannot merely be left to chance. Because of these opinions, de Bono continues to invent ways to teach creative thinking as a separate skill. Former teaching strategies include complete courses that were adopted as curriculum for children, with later versions adapted for adults. This included many attention directing tools under the names of CoRT, later as DATT, Masterthinker series, and the most widely used Six Thinking Hats. He continues to experiment with new systems such as The de Bono Code.
All his thinking tools operate by directing attention to various aspects and factors of the topic at hand for a short time period of a few minutes. The various tools (with their corresponding acronyms) are often combined together in series to arrive at practical solutions.
For example, after making a list Considering All Factors, (CAF) the thinker selects a priority after doing a FIP (First Important Priorities.) Then, an OPV (Other Peoples' View) is used to help implementation of the idea. This tool prompts the thinker to list the people (or types of people) who would be affected by a proposed idea. The thinker is then required to imagine what effects that idea would have on each of these different people so their concerns may be anticipated and answered.While this may sound like an exercise in altruism, it need not be. Say you've got a selfish desire (e.g. you're a kid wanting ice cream), then doing an OPV will help you anticipate and plan for other peoples' responses (e.g. "Mummy, me and Jimmy were thinking that cleaning our rooms to your complete satisfaction might earn us both an ice cream. But we would have to eat these ice-creams immediately to avoid spoiling our dinner, so we'd have to start cleaning right away.")
Schools from over twenty countries have included de Bono's thinking tools into their curriculum.[3]
De Bono has stated that he regards language as having been both the biggest help and the biggest barrier to human progress.
His contention is that just as language has allowed one generation to pass useful knowledge onto the next, it has also allowed dangerous myths and out-of-date ideas to become enshrined.
Convinced that a key way forward for humanity is better language, he published "The Edward de Bono Code Book" in 2000. In this book, he proposed a suite of new words based on numbers, where each number combination represents a useful idea or situation that currently does not have a single-word representation.
For example, de Bono code 6/2 means "Give me my point of view and I will give you your point of view." dBc 6/2 might be used in situations where one or both of two parties in a dispute are making insufficient effort to understand the other's perspective.[4]
In 2000, de Bono advised a U.K Foreign Office committee that the Arab-Israeli conflict might be due, in part, to low levels of zinc found in people who eat unleavened bread (e.g. pita flatbread), a known side-effect of which is aggression. He suggested shipping out jars of Marmite to compensate.[5][6]
He has suggested an alternative to the penalty shootout when a soccer match ends in a draw. If the number of times each goalkeeper touches the ball is recorded throughout the game the results can be compared in the event of a draw. The team whose goalkeeper has touched the ball more often is the loser. The winner will then be the team that has had more attempts at scoring goals and is more aggressive (and therefore exciting) in their style of play. This mechanism would avoid the tension of the penalty shoot out. However, some people argue that this method of deciding a drawn match completely ignores the goalkeeper's skill which can win a game for a team. If the game goes to a penalty shootout, even though one team may have completely dominated the other, the goalkeeper has kept the scores level. Furthermore the goalkeeper can make highly skilled saves in a penalty shootout and defeat the better team.
Since poetry is an area of lateral thinking, he originated a form of poetry, similar to a limerick, that he termed a "Bonto." In 2007, his Septoe idea was given life through a new website. Septoes allow people to distill their wisdom into phrases of exactly seven words.[7]
Edward de Bono invented a simple game as a challenge, called the L Game, that requires strategy to win, and 'Concept Snap', which requires participants to think of ways in which different objects can be used to perform similar functions. He does concede that what is learned from games tends not to be transferred to thinking in real life.
The following two critiques on research methodology assume the Philosophy of Positivism. The critiques on Positivism usually comes from the Philosophy of Antipositivism.
The views of De Bono on language have been challenged by some philologists (Marco Ferri, 1994) who contend that his view of language as the biggest barrier to human progress is superficial. Ferri argues that a lack of human critical judgement should be held responsible for the transmission of out-of-date ideas.
De Bono has also been criticized for his suggestion of exporting Marmite to the Middle East in order to ease conflict in the area (as the area is associated with low zinc levels, which De Bono argued leads to heightened aggression). This idea achieved certain prominence and was featured on an episode of the British television programme, QI.
Partial list of books by de Bono include:
De Bono has also written numerous articles published in refereed and other journals, including The Lancet and Clinical Science.
The Edward de Bono Society is an information based and social networking site for all de Bono followers.