About Dr de Bono
Above picture taken 2006 during an interview/luncheon in Piccadilly, London, at Dr de Bono's invitation.
Also please see You Tube interview with Dr de Bono, below
Thank you for visiting this site. As far as I can see, Dr Edward de Bono has done more for human thinking than any person in history. As far as I understand, Dr de Bono originated the idea of thinking skills, and created a repertoire of practical thinking tools. The basis of his programme is CoRT: the Cognitive Research Trust, based in Cambridge. The CoRT lessons contain 60 tools, 20 of which are recommended to be taught to children. Those youngsters who do learn the thinking skills of CoRT show remarkable improvement.
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| de Bono interview part 1 | de Bono interview part 2 |
Perception and Creativity
- Dr de Bono was not the first in history to realise the importance of perception and humour, but in originating "lateral thinking" he has demystified creativity.
He has made creativity understandable, practical, learnable. By making thinking, and creativity, into a skill, Edward de Bono is successfully transferring previously unknown abilities. He is making advanced thinking possible.
When most people do the training in some of the courses he has developed, the reaction is that the ideas are obvious, and we should be doing this all the time. The ideas are simple and obvious. But through history the simple and obvious was not deemed clever or scholastic, so perception - and humour - was mostly ignored. - Historically, Edward has shown that our intellectual thinking tradition, has been completely dominated by the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, set the thinking tradition of the Western world for 2,400 years.
Rather than question the Greeks, in our schools and universities for hundreds of years, we have been taught to emulate the Greek philosophers. So in our parliaments and schools we learn debate, argument, criticism, and analysis as great thinking.
Argument etc. has its uses, and Greek thinking, especially the use of the hypothesis, has helped advances in technology. But it is not enough. We need creative thinking and constructive thinking, and we need perceptual skills. Traditional thinking - like the front left wheel of a car - is useful, but we need other "wheels" too. We need creative thinking. If we do not utilise the creative tools available, we are not making optimum use of our intelligence.
Examples
- David Lane of the Hungerford Guidance Centre did a 20-year study. The Hungerford Guidance Centre looked after youngsters who were too difficult to be looked after elsewhere. David Lane found that 90% of young people who had been taught to think, did not re-offend.
A study in Australia by Professor John Edwards showed that young people in school taught to think did 60% better in all their subjects than those not taught thinking. - Even some improvement is worth having. It's not about creating geniuses. It's about coping in a complex world. About achievement. About giving people self-worth and a can-do principle. When people know they can think for themselves, they find ways out of their problems without having to rely on mystique.
There is no doubt the thinking tools work, which is why businesses have been quick to take them up, to out-think the competition. Other areas, like politics and education, which rely heavily on historical precedent, are complacent and slow, which is rather sad, since they are the areas most in need of change.
Dennis Interviews Edward de Bono June 2006
- Why is it necessary to teach thinking specifically? - "Because
thinking is more than just a matter of intelligence and information.
The thinking we develop naturally or are taught at school is mainly
about judgement and not about design and creative thinking. As I
often say: 'You can analyse the past but you have to design the
future'."Have you had many eureka! moments in your career, if so,
how many, and which were the best ones? - "No. I had
realisations and insights: like exploring a new country, when
thinking about self-organising information systems."What makes you happy? - "There are two sorts of happiness.
One is avoiding the absence of unhappiness, arrogance,
complacency and bullying. Then happiness is achievement and
making something happen."You have a phenomenal output of books and creative ideas.
You obviously use your own thinking tools. Which tool do you
use most? Do you have a favourite and why? "I use Concept
Challenge a lot. I look at something in one way then look another
way. For specific ideas I find the Random Word useful."A lot of people especially in England seem to resent people like
you, of great achievement. Do you think that this resentment
is due to jealousy, and why do you think that jealousy is such a strong emotion in people? How do you deal with it? "Yes, there is a lot of jealousy for any sort of success in England, other than sports. In the UK, this probably originated in the class structure. People didn't want a mate to think that you were 'too clever by half' and didn't want to see someone rising from a lesser class through merit."When you started out with thinking skills you established
CoRT as a Trust in Cambridge. I understand at that time
around 1970 there were only about six people in the world
who understood what you were doing. To undertake to
change the way people think takes an extraordinary degree
of confidence. You knew you were right. Yet in your books
you say that one of our problems in our thinking in society
today is: Being Right. How do you reconcile your rightness?
Why should you be more right than anybody else? "Rightness
judged by results can be right or valuable. Teaching thinking has
made results. Improving employment by 500%. Reducing crime
by 90%. Results in schools have shown that teaching thinking
increased performance in all subjects by 30 - 100%."How do you justify setting up trainers to charge people for
learning to think? Shouldn't thinking be a human right taught
in schools? "Just as we are sometimes charged for health and
entertainment then thinking should be paid for because the
State does not provide."Why does creativity appeal to you? What has it done for you
personally? "Without creativity, we are left with routine and
stagnation. Creativity is change, progress, and achievement."Which of your books do you like best? Which one was most
difficult to write? Why do you write so many books? "The
Mechanism of Mind because it describes the nerve networks in
the brain, which allow incoming information to organise itself
into patterns. Leading physicist Professor Murray Gell-Mann
said: 'You were talking about chaos and complexity ten years
before mathematicians did so.' He should know because he is
the world expert on complexity. He set up the Santa Fe
Institute, the leading body looking at complexity. He
commissioned a team of computer experts to simulate what I
wrote in the book and said it worked exactly as predicted."In your wide experience of teaching thinking what is the
most important thing for people to understand when
learning to think? "Be open to new ideas and possibilities. If
you feel you know everything and are already excellent, you
won't learn anything."How do you see the world in 25 years if people generally
were to take their thinking as seriously as you would like
them to? "People would solve problems and conflicts. People
would be more constructive and help each other more, and
build towards a future."Why are mistakes important in thinking? "They are not
important but a form of provocation, where we look forward to
see where they lead to. Mistakes are an example of
provocation."What is it about your books that appeals to the general
public? "They are simple and productive. I have had many
letters from a wide range of people, from the top to humble,
who say the books have changed their lives."