Edward de Bono

 Edward de Bono is regarded by many as the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, innovation and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill.  He is equally re-known for his development of the Six Thinking Hats technique and the Direct Attention Thinking Tools.  He is the originator of the concept of Lateral Thinking. He has written 65 books with translations into 37 languages and had been invited to lecture in more than 57 countries.

Dr. de Bono was born in Malta.  After his initial education at St. Edward's College, Malta, and the Royal University of Malta, where he obtained a degree in medicine, he proceeded as a Rhodes scholar to Oxford, where he gained an honors degree in psychology and physiology and then a D.Phil. in medicine.  He also holds a PhD. from Cambridge.  He has had faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, London, Cambridge and Harvard.

Dr. de. Bono is not only a teacher of thinking but also a designer of thinking methods.  In his book The Mechanism of Mind (1969), he described how the nerve networks in the brain provide a self-organising system in which information can organise itself into patterns.  The ideas put forward in this book were ten years ahead of the work of mathematicians understanding of how the brain works.

It is from this base that Dr. de Bono has designed his methodologies and tools for thinking.  He is the inventor of the "Lateral thinking" and the operative word "po".  He is the designer of the CoRT Thinking Program for schools, which is most widely used program internationally for the direct teaching of thinking as a curriculum subject in schools.

Although Dr. de Bono's thinking methods are based on a fundamental understanding of how the brain handles and organise information, the methods are designed to be very simple, practical and effective. His method can be used by four year olds and by senior executives; by down syndrome youngsters and Nobel laureates. Dr. de Bono does not rely on exhortation or inspiration, which only has a limited effect.  He prefers to design powerful tools that last for ever. Dr. de Bono believes that the traditional emphasis on analysis, critical thinking, and argument is totally inadequate.  He wishes to put an equal emphasis on constructive and creative thinking.