Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono (19 May 1933 – 10 June 2021)[1] was aMaltese physician and commentator. He originated the termlateral thinking, and wrote many books on thinking, includingSix Thinking Hats.[2]
The originator of the term 'Lateral Thinking', de Bono wrote 85 books with translations into 46 languages.[5] He taught his thinking methods to government agencies, corporate clients, organizations and individuals, privately or publicly in group sessions. He promoted the World Center for New Thinking (2004–2011), based in Malta, which applied Thinking Tools to solution and policy design on the geopolitical level. His book The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967) was described as one of the 12 most influential books sinceWorld War II byThe Sunday Times.[8]
In 1976, de Bono took part in a radio debate for the BBC with British philosopherA. J. Ayer, on the subject of effective democracy.[9]
Starting on Wednesday 8 September 1982, theBBC ran a series of 10 weekly programmes entitledde Bono's Thinking Course.[10] In the shows, he explained how thinking skills could be improved by attention and practice. The series was repeated the following year. A book with the same title accompanied the series. In May 1994, he gave a half-hourOpinions lecture televised onChannel 4 and subsequently published inThe Independent as "Thinking Hats On".[11] In 1995, he created a futuristic documentary film,2040: Possibilities by Edward de Bono, depicting a lecture to an audience of viewers released from acryogenic freeze for contemporary society in the year 2040.[5]
Convinced that a key way forward for humanity is a better language, he publishedThe Edward de Bono Code Book in 2000. In this book, he proposeda 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." Such a code might be used in situations where one or both of the two parties in a dispute are making insufficient effort to understand the other's perspective.[12]
Parallel thinking is a term coined by de Bono.[13][14] Parallel thinking is described as a constructive alternative to: "adversarial thinking";debate; and the approaches exemplified by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (whom de Bono refers to as the "Greek gang of three" (GG3)[15][16]). In general, parallel thinking is a further development of the well-knownlateral-thinking processes, focusing even more on explorations—looking forwhat can be rather than forwhat is.
Parallel thinking is defined as a thinking process where focus is split in specific directions. When done in a group it effectively avoids the consequences of the adversarial approach (as used in courts). In adversarial debate, the objective is toprove ordisprove statements put forward by the parties (normally two). This is also known as thedialectic approach. In Parallel Thinking, practitioners put forward as many statements as possible in several (preferably more than two) parallel tracks. This leads toexploration of a subject where all participants can contribute, in parallel, with knowledge, facts, feelings, etc. Crucial to the method is that the process is done in a disciplined manner, and that all participants play along and contributein parallel. Thus each participant must stick to the specific track.Six Thinking Hats is an example of its implementation.[14]
Edward de Bono argued that companies could raise money just as governments now do – by printing it. He put forward the idea ofprivate currency as a claim on products or services produced by the issuer.[19]
Equally damaging to the scientific study of creativity, in our view, has been the takeover of the field, in the popular mind, by those who follow what might be referred to as a pragmatic approach. Those taking this approach have been concerned primarily with developing creativity, secondarily with understanding it, but almost not at all with testing the validity of their ideas about it. [...] Perhaps the foremost proponent of this approach is Edward De Bono, whose work on lateral thinking and other aspects of creativity has had what appears to be considerable commercial success.[20]
Frameworks For Thinking is an evaluation of 42 popular thinking frameworks conducted by a team of researchers. Regarding Edward de Bono they write,
[he] is more interested in the usefulness of developing ideas than proving the reliability or efficacy of his approach. There is sparse research evidence to show that generalised improvements in thinking performance can be attributed to training in the use of CoRT [Cognitive Research Trust] or Thinking Hats tools. An early evaluation of CoRT reported significant benefits for Special Educational Needs (SEN) pupils... However, in a more recent study with Australian aboriginal children (Ritchie and Edwards, 1996), little evidence of generalisation was found other than in the area of creative thinking.[21]
Summarising de Bono's 1985 work inConflicts: A Better Way to Resolve Them, M. Afzalur Rahim,distinguished professor of management atWestern Kentucky University with a particular focus on conflict management in organizations, gives his view that, as pertains to Rahim's own field of research, "De Bono's approach to total elimination ofconflict is no different from the approaches of the classicists. This approach to dealing with conflict is completely out of tune with modern thinking and, therefore, unsatisfactory."[22]
In 1971 de Bono married Josephine Hall-White. They had two sons, Caspar and Charlie, and later divorced.[23] His will, published after his death, named two more children, another son, Francis Edward de Bono, also known as Edward de Bono, the son of Magdalena Szekely, and a daughter, Juliana Pars.[24]
De Bono regularly visited Australia and in 1995 acquired Little Green Island, aprivate island of 24 hectares (59 acres) located off ofShoal Point, Queensland, from businesswomanJanet Holmes à Court.[25] He subsequently constructed a retreat hosting corporate seminars and "think tank" events.[26][27] De Bono owned four private islands in total, also including Reklusia Cay in the Bahamas,West Skeam Island in Ireland, and Tessera in Italy'sVenetian Lagoon. In a 2003 interview he observed "I just like islands, that's all", and compared owning an island to having "your own principality, territory and psychological space".[28]
Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas (1992)ISBN978-0-00-255143-4 – a summation of many of De Bono's ideas on creativity
Can Simple Ideation Techniques Enhance Idea Generation? Belski, I., Hourani, A., Valentine, A., & Belski, A. In A. Bainbridge-Smith, Z. T. Qi, & G.S. Gupta (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (pp. 1-9). Wellington, New Zealand. 2014
Can simple ideation techniques influence idea generation: comparing results from Australia, Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation. Belski, I., Belski, A., Berdonosov, V., Busov, B., Bartlova, M. Malashevskaya, E., ...Tervonen, N. In A. Oo, A. Patel, T.Hilditch, & S. Chandran (Ed.s), Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (pp. 474-873). Geelong, Australia: School of Engineering, Deakin University. 2015
The effects of the CoRT 1 thinking skills program on students. Edwards, J., & Baldauf, R. B. (Jr.). The effects of the CoRT 1 thinking skills programme on students. In D. N. Perkins, J. Lochhead, & J. Bishop (Eds.),Thinking: The second international conference (pp. 453–473). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1987
Measuring the effects of the direct teaching of thinking skills. Edwards, J. Human Intelligence Newsletter , 9 (30), pp.9-10;1988
The direct teaching of thinking skills Edwards, J. G. Evans, Learning and Teaching Cognitive Skills , Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Research, 1991, pp. 87-106; 1991
Research work on the CoRT method. Edwards, J. In S. Maclure & P. Davies (Eds.), Learning to think: Thinking to learn (pp. 19–30). Oxford, UK: Pergamon. 1991
The Teaching of Thinking Edwards, J. Paper presented at the Joint AARE/NZARE Conference, Geelong. 1992
Thinking, education and human potential: International Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Melbourne: Hawker Brownlow, 6-15. 1994
Thinking and change. Edwards, J. In S. Dingli (Ed.), Creative thinking: A multi-faceted approach (pp. 16–29). Msida: Malta University Press. 1994
Teaching thinking in schools: An overview. Edwards, J. Teaching thinking in schools, Unicorn, 21(1), 27-36. 1995
The direct teaching of thinking in education and in business. Edwards, J. In S. Dingli (Ed.), Creative thinking: New perspectives (pp. 82–95). Msida: Malta University Press. 1996
^Edward de Bono coined the term "The gang of three" to refer to three Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle -see Guardian article April 24th 2007
^Edward De Bono,Parallel thinking: from Socratic thinking to de Bono thinking, Viking 1994ISBN0-670-85126-4, page 36–38
^Lloyd, John; Mitchinson, John (2006).The Book of General Ignorance. Faber & Faber.
^Moseley, D; Baumfield, V.; Elliott, J.; Higgins, S.; Miller, J.; Newton, D. (2006). "De Bono's lateral and parallel thinking tools".Frameworks for Thinking A Handbook for Teaching and Learning. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-511-48991-4.OCLC1229217614.
^Rahim, M. Afzalur (2011).Managing conflict in organizations (4th ed.). New Brunswick NJ: Transaction. p. 12.ISBN978-1-4128-4425-3.OCLC778434697.
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