Celebrating Edward de Bono
To celebrate Edward de Bono’s birthday on the 19th May here is a short post about his life.
Who is Edward de Bono?
Edward de Bono was a Maltese/British businessman, born on this day in 1933. He made it his mission to teach his thinking methods to governments and businesses around the world. He wrote 84 books that have been translated into 46 languages, but he’s perhaps best known for his “six thinking hats”. These six hats – or different aspects of thinking – are colour coded to denote control, creativity, feelings, positivity, caution and factual information.
De Bono believed that by learning how to use these different ways of thinking, we can all become more effective and work with greater collaboration and communication in our personal and professional lives. It was his passion to prove that creative and effective thinking can be taught and learned using structures and systematic techniques.
While his business methods became hugely influential, de Bono was not without his detractors. Some academic critics say his ideas weren’t tested and don’t stand up to scrutiny when they are.
Lateral Thinking
When Edward de Bono coined the term “lateral thinking” in 1967, he wasn’t inventing a new concept. Instead, it was just a different way of looking at an old one. De Bono took his inspiration from the behaviour of self-organizing information systems and insisted that the best thinking didn’t have to be linear, sequential or logical, but could also move sideways. The term lateral thinking became so popular that it soon entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
Why not make up your own mind? We have his full range of titles which you’ll find by logging into LibrarySearch.
Check out: Teach yourself to think, Simplicity or The happiness purpose to begin opening your mind.
To mark his birthday, I’m going to dip into one or two of his books. I’m new to this thinking lark, so I’m going to start off with the basics:
By Lesley McRobb
Read more on our blog by Lesley like International Haiku Poetry Day
