Edward de Bono 381467 225773225 2008-07-15T09:49:38Z Haukurth 16226 Some pruning {{Articleissues| peacock = May 2008| refimprove = May 2008| POV = May 2008}} <!-- Thinking about changing Maltese to British or vice versa? Kindly see the Talk (Discussion ) page first. --> [[Image:Edward de Bono 1.jpg|thumb|Edward de Bono]] '''Edward de Bono''' (born [[May 19]], [[1933]], in [[Malta]]) is a [[Channel Islands|British]] [[physician]], [[author]], [[inventor]], and [[Organizational Psychology|consultant]]. He is best known as the originator of the term [[lateral thinking]] (structured creativity) and the leading proponent of the deliberate teaching of thinking in schools. == Biography == Edward de Bono studied at St Edward's College in [[Malta]] and subsequently gained a medical degree from the [[Royal University of Malta]]. He was a Rhodes Scholar at [[Oxford]] where he gained an M.A. in psychology and physiology. He also has a D. Phil in Medicine and a Ph.D. from [[Cambridge]], a D. Des (Doctor of Design) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; an LL.D. from Dundee. He holds professorships at the Universities of Malta, Pretoria, Dublin City University, and the University of Central England. The New University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix AZ appointed Dr. de Bono Da Vinci Professor of Thinking in May 2005.<ref>{{cite web | title = About Edward de Bono | publisher = Edward de Bono's Personal Web Site | date = 2008-05-05 | url = http://www.edwarddebono.com/about.htm | accessdate = 2008-05-05 }}</ref> He was formerly married, has two sons and resides on the [[Channel Islands]]. 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 spent the last 30 years teaching thinking, including working with governments, corporations, organisations and individuals, speaking publicly or privately on many matters. 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 detailed a range of 'deliberate thinking methods' - applications emphasizing thinking as a deliberate act rather than a reactive one. His writing style has been lauded for being simple and practical. Avoiding academic terminology, he has advanced [[applied psychology]] by making theories about [[creativity]] and [[perception]] into usable tools. De Bono's work has become particularly popular in the sphere of [[business]] - perhaps because of the perceived need to restructure [[corporation]]s, to allow more flexible working practices and to innovate in products and services. The methods have migrated into corporate training courses designed to help employees and executives [[Thinking outside the box|think outside the box]]. The popularity of his work extends, too, into the sphere of worldwide popular culture; in the popular [[Japan]]ese [[anime]] series [[Azumanga Daioh]], the character [[Ayumu Kasuga|Osaka]] is known for her skill at solving [[situation puzzle|lateral thinking puzzles]] such as those pioneered by de Bono. {{Fact|date=March 2007}} ==Work== ===Lateral Thinking=== De Bono's contention is that everyone should strive to be more creative, but that unstructured creativity such as brainstorming is less effective than following the techniques that he prescribes. The most comprehensive exposition of de Bono's techniques for generating creative ideas was published in his 1992 book, Serious Creativity.<ref> {{cite book| last=de Bono| first= Edward| year=1992|title=Serious Creativity|}}</ref> ===Direct Teaching of Thinking=== De Bono argues that most of the problems in thinking are at the perceptual level - that is, that many more mistakes are made by people jumping to the wrong conclusion than by behaving irrationally once all the relevant facts are known. To address this problem, he created attention directing tools under the name of CoRT, later as DATT and also included as Code 2 in the de Bono Code. As the name suggests, the tools operate by directing peoples' attention to different aspects of the situation for a couple of minutes. For example, an OPV (Other Peoples' View) 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. While this may sound like an exercise in altruism, it need not be. Say you've got a selfish desire (eg. you're a kid wanting ice cream), then doing an OPV will help you anticipate and plan for other peoples' responses (eg. "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."). Schools from over twenty countries have included de Bono's thinking tools into their curriculum.<ref>{{cite web | title = About Edward de Bono | publisher = Edward de Bono's Personal Web Site | date = 2008-05-05 | url = http://www.edwarddebono.com/about.htm | accessdate = 2008-05-05 }}</ref> ===Language=== 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.<ref> {{cite book| last=de Bono| first= Edward| year=2000|title=The de Bono Code Book| pages=p.52|}}</ref> ===Ideas=== Edward de Bono is a prolific originator of ideas, only a few of which are listed here. *In 2000 he 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]], a known side-effect of which is [[aggression]]. He suggested shipping out jars of [[Marmite]] to compensate. <ref>[[John Lloyd (writer)|Lloyd, J]] & [[John Mitchinson|Mitchinson, J]]: "[[The Book of General Ignorance]]". Faber & Faber, 2006.</ref> *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.<ref>{{cite web | title = Septoe Web Site | publisher = Innovation Delivery | date = 2008-05-05 | url = http://www.yourwisdom.ie | accessdate = 2008-05-05 }}</ref> *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, critics argue{{ww}} 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. ===Games=== Edward de Bono has been an enthusiastic inventor of games {{Fact|date=May 2008}}, including the [[L Game]], a simple board 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. ===Movements=== {{Unreferencedsection|date=May 2008}} At various junctures Edward de Bono has tried to create new movements in the hope that people pulling in the same direction at the same time will achieve more than people acting independently. Some of these movements include: *Network. Introduced in the book, "The Happiness Purpose" *The Positive Revolution *YEAH Teams *H+ These ideas do not seem to have been taken up by more than the occasional de Bono devotee. There may be several reasons for this: * The ideas are owned by a single person, and others may not feel motivated to join when they cannot share ownership. * The movements were designed to counter society's deficiencies and so are of necessity, unfashionable. * Blanket, uniform media coverage has washed away minority cultures. If the practice of thousands of years of people singing folk songs together can be wiped out in a couple of decades, how difficult would it be to start such a movement from scratch? ==Published works== Books by de Bono include: * ''[[The Use of Lateral Thinking]]'' (1967) ISBN 0-14-013788-2, introduced the term "[[lateral thinking]]" * ''[[New Think]]'' (1967, 1968) ISBN 0-380-01426-2 * ''[[The Five-Day Course in Thinking]]'' (1968), introduced the [[L game]] * ''[[The Mechanism of the Mind]]'' (1969), Intl Center for Creative Thinking 1992 reprint: ISBN 0-14-013787-4, suggests that the mind is a pattern matching machine * ''[[Lateral Thinking]]: Creativity Step by Step'', (1970), Harper & Row 1973 paperback: ISBN 0-06-090325-2 * ''[[The Dog-Exercising Machine]]'' (1970) * ''[[Technology Today]]'' (1971) * ''[[Practical Thinking]]'' (1971) * ''[[Lateral Thinking for Management]]'' (1971) * ''[[Po: A Device for Successful Thinking]]'' (1972), ISBN 0-671-21338-5, introduced the term [[provocative operation|Po]] * ''[[Children Solve Problems]]'' (1972) ISBN 13-978-0060110246, ISBN 10-0060110244 * ''[[Po: Beyond Yes and No]]'' (1973), ISBN 0-14-021715-0 * ''[[Eureka!: An Illustrated History of Inventions from the Wheel to the Computer]]'' (1974) * ''[[Teaching Thinking]]'' (1976) * ''[[The Greatest Thinkers: The Thirty Minds That Shaped Our Civilization]]'' (1976), ISBN 0-399-11762-8 * ''[[Wordpower]]'' (1977) * ''[[The Happiness Purpose]]'' (1977) * ''[[Opportunities (book)|Opportunities]] : A handbook for business opportunity search'' (1978) * ''[[Future Positive]]'' (1979) * ''[[Atlas of Management Thinking]]'' (1981) * ''[[De Bono's Course in Thinking]]'' (1982) * ''[[Learn-To-Think: Coursebook and Instructors Manual]]'' (1982), ISBN 0-88496-199-0 * ''[[Tactics: The Art and Science of Success]]'' (1985) * ''[[Conflicts]]'' (1985) * ''[[Masterthinker's Handbook]]'' (1985) * ''[[Six Thinking Hats]]'' (1985) ISBN 0-316-17831-4 * ''[[I Am Right, You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic]]'' (1990) ISBN 0-14-012678-3 * ''[[Six Action Shoes]]'' (1991) * ''[[Handbook for the Positive Revolution]]'' (1991) ISBN 0-14-012679-1 * ''[[Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas]]'' (1992) ISBN 0-00-255143-8 – a summation of many of De Bono's ideas on creativity * ''[[Sur/Petition]]'' (1992) ISBN 0-88730-543-1 - creating value monopolies when everyone else is merely competing. * ''[[Teach Yourself How to Think]]'' (1995) * ''[[How to Be More Interesting]]'' (1998) * ''[[Simplicity]]'' (1999) * ''[[Thinking in the New Millennium]]'' (1999) * ''[[Why I Want To Be King of Australia]]'' (1999) * ''[[How to Have A Beautiful Mind]]'' (2004) * ''[[Six Value Medals]]'' (2005) * ''[[H+ (Plus): A New Religion]]'' (2006) * ''[[How to Have Creative Ideas]]'' (2007) * ''[[Free or Unfree? : Are Americans Really Free?]]'' (2007) ISBN 1597775444 De Bono has also written numerous articles published in refereed and other journals, including ''[[The Lancet]]'' and ''[[Clinical Science]]''. ==See also== *[[The da Vinci Medallion]] *[[De Bono Hats]] *[[Parallel thinking]] ==References== <references/> ==External links== {{wikiquote}} *[http://www.edwarddebono.com/ de Bono web portal] {{DEFAULTSORT:Bono, Edward de}} [[Category:1933 births]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:Maltese Rhodes scholars]] [[Category:British psychologists]] [[Category:Popular psychology]] [[Category:Maltese physicians]] [[Category:Maltese psychologists]] [[af:Edward de Bono]] [[ar:إدوارد دي بونو]] [[de:Edward de Bono]] [[es:Edward De Bono]] [[eo:Edward de Bono]] [[fr:Edward de Bono]] [[it:Edward de Bono]] [[nl:Edward de Bono]] [[pl:Edward de Bono]] [[ru:Боно, Эдвард де]] [[sr:Едвард де Боно]] [[sv:Edward de Bono]] [[zh:愛德華·德·波諾]]