edward de bono and the mechanism of mind

EDWARD DE BONO AND THE MECHANISM OF MIND

BOOKS BY PETER FRITZ WALTER

SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY LITIGATION

COACHING YOUR INNER CHILD

THE LEADERSHIP I CHING

LEADERSHIP & CAREER IN THE 21ST CENTURY

CREATIVE-C LEARNING

INTEGRATE YOUR EMOTIONS

KRISHNAMURTI AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

THE NEW PARADIGM IN BUSINESS, LEADERSHIP AND CAREER

THE NEW PARADIGM IN CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUALITY

THE NEW PARADIGM IN SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS THEORY

THE VIBRANT NATURE OF LIFE

SHAMANIC WISDOM MEETS THE WESTERN MIND

CREATIVE GENIUS

THE BETTER LIFE

SERVANT LEADERSHIP

CREATIVE LEARNING AND CAREER

FRITJOF CAPRA AND THE SYSTEMS VIEW OF LIFE

FRANOISE DOLTO AND CHILD PSYCHOANALYSIS


EDWARD DE BONO AND THE MECHA-NISM OF

MINDSHORT BIOGRAPHY, BOOK REVIEWS,

QUOTES, AND COMMENTS(GREAT MINDS SERIES, VOL, 5)

by Peter Fritz Walter

Published by Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC

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2015 Peter Fritz Walter. Some rights reserved.

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About Dr. Peter Fritz Walterhttp://peterfritzwalter.com

About the Author

Parallel to an international law career in Germany, Switzerland and the United States, Dr. Peter Fritz Walter (Pierre) focused upon fine art, cookery, astrology, musical performance, social sciences and humanities.

He started writing essays as an adolescent and received a high school award for creative writing and editorial work for the school magazine.

After finalizing his law diplomas, he graduated with an LL.M. in European Integration atSaarlandUniversity, Germany, and with a Doctor of Law title from University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1987.

He then took courses in psychology at the University of Gene-va and interviewed a number of psychotherapists in Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland. His interest was intensified through a hypnotherapy with an Ericksonian American hypnotherapist in Lausanne. This led him to the recovery and healing of his inner child.

In 1986, he met the late French psychotherapist and child psycho-analystFranoise Dolto (1908-1988)in Paris and interviewed her. A long correspondence followed up to their encounter which was considered by the curators of the Dolto Trust interesting enough to be published in a book alongside all of Doltos other letter ex-changes byGallimard Publishers in Paris, in 2005.

After a second career as a corporate trainer and personal coach, Pierre retired as a full-time writer, philosopher and consultant.

His nonfiction books emphasize a systemic, holistic, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective, while his fiction works and short stories focus upon education, philosophy, perennial wis-dom, and the poetic formulation of an integrative worldview.

Pierre is a German-French bilingual native speaker and writes English as his 4th language after German, Latin and French. He also reads source literature for his research works in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. In addition, Pierre has notions of Thai, Khmer, Chinese and Japanese.

All of Pierres books are hand-crafted and self-published, de-signed by the author. Pierre publishes via his Delaware company, Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC, and under the imprints of IPUBLICA and SCM (Sirius-C Media).

One cannot look in the right direction by looking more ef-ficiently in the wrong direction.EDWARD DE BONO

The authors profits from this book are being donated to charity.

ContentsIntroduction! 9About Great Minds Series

Chapter One! 13Short Biography

Chapter Two! 21Major Training ConceptsLateral Thinking! 21The Need for Creative Thinking ! 23

Alternatives! 24Focus! 24Challenge! 24Random Entry! 24Provocation and Movement! 25Harvesting! 25The Treatment of Ideas! 25

Six Thinking Hats! 26Simplicity! 28Facilitation! 29

Chapter Three! 31Book ReviewsReview! 32Quotes! 34

The Mechanism of Mind! 36

Review! 36Quotes! 39

Serious Creativity! 50Review! 50Quotes! 53

Sur/Petition! 60Tactics! 69

Bibliography! 77Contextual Bibliography

Personal Notes! 81


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IntroductionAbout Great Minds Series

We are currently transiting as a human race a time of great challenge and adventure that opens to us new path-ways for rediscovering and integrating the perennial holis-tic wisdom of ancient civilizations into our modern science paradigm. These civilizations were thriving before patriar-chy was putting nature upside-down.

Currently, with the advent of the networked global so-ciety, and systems theory as its scientific paradigm, we are looking into a different world, with a rise of horizontal and sustainable structures both in our business culture, and in science, and last not least on the important areas of psychology, medicine, and spirituality.

A paradigm, from Greek paradeigma, is a pattern of things, a configuration of ideas, a set of dominant beliefs, a certain way of look-ing at the world, a set of assumptions, a frame of reference or lens, and even an entire worldview.

While most of this new and yet old path has yet to be trotted, we cannot any longer overlook the changes that happen all around us virtually every day.

Invariably, as students, scientists, doctors, consultants, lawyers, business executives or government officials, we face problems today that are so complex, entangled and novel that they cannot possibly be solved on the basis of our old paradigm, and our old way of thinking. As Albert Einstein said, we cannot solve a problem on the same level of thought that created it in the first place hence the need for changing our view of looking at things, the world, and our personal and collective predicaments.

What still about half a decade ago seemed unlikely is happening now all around us: we are rediscovering more and more fragments of an integrative and holistic wisdom that represents the cultural and scientific treasure of many ancient tribes and kingdoms that were based upon a per-ennial tradition which held that all in our universe is inter-connected and interrelated, and that humans are set in the world to live in unison with the infinite wisdom inherent in creation as a major task for driving evolution forward!

It happens in science, since the advent of relativity the-ory, quantum physics and string theory, it happens in neu-roscience and systems theory, it happens in molecular bi-ology, and in ecology, and as a result, and because science is a major motor in society, it happens now with increasing speed in the industrial and the business world, and in the


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way people earn their lives and manifest their innate tal-ents through their professional engagement.

And it happens also, and what this book is set to em-phasize, in psychology and psychoanalysis, for Franoise Dolto, while having been a member of the Freudian psy-choanalytic school, has created an approach to healing psychotic children that was really unknown to the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

More and more people begin to realize that we cannot honestly continue to destroy our globe by disregarding the natural law of self-regulation, both outwardly, by polluting air and water, and inside, by tolerating our emotions to be in a state of repression and turmoil.

Self-regulation is built into the life function and it can be found as a consistent pattern in the lifestyle of natives peoples around the world. It is similar with our immense intuitive and imaginal faculties that were downplayed in centuries of darkness and fragmentation, and that now emerge anew as major key stones in a worldview that puts the whole human at the frontline, a human who uses their whole brain, and who knows to balance their emotions and natural passions so as to arrive at a state of inner peace and synergetic relationships with others that bring mutual benefit instead of one-sided egotistic satisfaction.

For lasting changes to happen, however, to paraphrase J. Krishnamurti, we need to change the thinker, we need to undergo a transformation that puts our higher self up as the caretaker of our lives, not our conditioned ego.

ABOUT GREAT MINDS SERIES

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Hence the need to really look over the fence and get beyond social, cultural and racial conditioning for adopt-ing an integrative and holistic worldview that is focused on more than problem-solving.

What this book tries to convey is that taking the exam-ple of one of the greatest child psychoanalysts of our time, we may see that its not too late, be it for our planet and for us humans, our careers, our science, our collective spiritual advancement, and our scientific understanding of nature, and that we can thrive in a world that is surely more dif-ferent in ten years from now that it was one hundred years in the past compared to now.

We are free to continue to feel like victims in this new reality, and wait for being taken care of by the state, or we may accept the state, and society, as human creations that will never be perfect, and venture into creating our lives and careers in accordance with our true mission, and based upon our real gifts and talents.

Let me say a last word about this series of books about great personalities of our time, which I came to call Great Minds Collection. The books within this collection do not just feature books but authors, you may call them author reviews instead of book reviews, and they are more exten-sive also in highlighting the personal mission and autobio-graphical details which are to note for each author, includ-ing extensive quotes from their books.


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Chapter OneShort Biography

Edward de Bono has been a think tank, corporate con-sultant, writer and philosopher of world renown for dec-ades. His creative impact upon business and conceptual planning cant be underestimated. He has been a corporate consultant for DuPont, Exxon, Shell, Ford, IBM, British Airways, Ciba-Geigy, Citibankto name a few. Edward de Bono has contributed in a unique, outstanding manner to

the progress of education, creative thinking and human resource development and, more generally, the intellectual evolution of humanity. Unlike many other corporate train-ing experts, Dr. de Bono went way beyond the job of a cor-porate trainer, and is to be considered a true business phi-losopher and conceptualist. His research on perception and the memory matrix of the human brain has had a decisive impact upon accelerated learning, whole-brain learning, and other new approaches for learning languages, such as Suggestopedia or Superlearning.

I found de Bonos books at the onset of my career as a corporate consultant, in 1998.

At that time, as work notes for myself, I made a quotes collection, and then wrote these book reviews about a dec-ade later, after choosing the career of a full-time writer.

However, since then, my interest in Edward de Bono has only increased, despite the fact that I am now working on quite different projects. Dr. de Bono is one of not more than a handful of think tanks who show you how to bring your genius to the world, and earn fame and recognition for your creative contributions to the intellectual brilliance of humanity.

Edward de Bono was born in Malta in 1933, studied medicine and became a Rhodes Scholar to Christ Church in Oxford where he gained degrees in psychology and physiology, and a D.phil in medicine. On top of all that, he holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge and an MD from the Uni-


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versity of Malta. He has held appointments at the universi-ties of Oxford, London, Cambridge and Harvard.

Dr. de Bono is one of few people in history who can be said to have had a major impact on the way we think. In many ways he could be said to be the best known thinker internationally.

He has written numerous books with translations into 34 languages (all the major languages plus Hebrew, Arabic, Bahasa, Urdu, Slovene, Turkish etc), and has been invited to lecture in 52 countries around the world.

In the University of Buenos Aires five faculties use his books as required reading. In Venezuela, by law, all school children must spend an hour a week on his programs. In Singapore more than one hundred secondary schools use his work. In Malaysia the senior science schools have been using his work for ten years. In the U.S.A., Canada, Aus-tralia, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the UK there are thousands of schools using de Bono's programs for the teaching of thinking. At the International Thinking Meeting in Boston (1992) he was given an award as a key pioneer in the direct teaching of thinking in schools.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

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Edward de Bono has worked with many of the major corporations in the world such as IBM, DuPont, Pruden-tial, AT&T, British Airways, British Coal, NTT (Japan), Er-icsson (Sweden), Total (France), etc.

The largest corporation in Europe, Siemens (370,000 employees) is teaching his work across the whole corpora-tion, following Dr. de Bonos talk to the senior manage-ment team. When Microsoft held their first ever marketing meeting, they invited Edward de Bono to give the keynote address in Seattle to the five hundred top managers. Ed-ward de Bonos special contribution has been to tackle the mystical subject of creativity and, for the first time in his-tory, to put the subject on a solid basis. He has shown that creativity is a necessary behavior in a self-organizing living systems. His key book, The Mechanism of Mind was pub-lished in 1969. In it he showed how the nerve networks in the brain form asymmetric patterns as the basis of percep-tion. The leading physicist in the world, Professor Murray Gell Mann, said of this book that it was ten years ahead of mathematicians dealing with chaos theory, and nonlinear and self-organizing systems.

From this basis, Edward de Bono developed the con-cept and tools of lateral thinking. What is so special is that instead of his work remaining hidden in academic texts he has made it practical and available to everyone, from five years olds to adults. The term lateral thinking was intro-duced by Edward de Bono and is now so much part of the


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language that it is used equally in a physics lecture and in a television comedy.

Traditional thinking is to do with analysis, judgment and argument. In a stable world this was sufficient because it was enough to identify standard situations and apply stan-dard solutions. This is no longer so in our rapidly chang-ing world where the standard solutions may not work.

There is a huge need worldwide for thinking that is crea-tive and constructive and can design the way forward. Many

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

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of the major problems in the world cannot be solved by identifying and removing the cause. There is a need to de-sign a way forward even if the cause remains in place.

Edward de Bono has provided the methods and tools for this new thinking. He is the undisputed world leader in what may be the most important field of all in the future: constructive and creative thinking.

In 1995 the Malta Government awarded Edward de Bono the Order of Merit. This is the highest award avail-able and is limited to only twenty living persons. For many thousands, indeed millions, of people world-wide, Edward de Bonos name has become a symbol of creativity and new thinking.

Edward de Bono founded the International Creative Fo-rum which has had as members many of the leading cor-porations in the world: IBM, Du Pont, Prudential, Nestle, British Airways, Alcoa, CSR etc. The International Creativity Office was setup by de Bono in New York to work with the United Nations and member countries to produce new ideas on international issues.

Dr. de Bono has made two TV series: de Bonos Course in Thinking (BBC) and The Greatest Thinkers (WDR, Ger-many).

Perhaps what is so unique about Edward de Bono is that his work spans from teaching 7 years olds in primary schools to working with senior executives in the worlds largest corporations. His work also spans many cultures: Europe, North and South America, Russia, The Middle


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East, Africa, SE Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc.

In September 1996, the De Bono Institute was launched in Melbourne as a world center for new thinking. The An-drews Foundation has donated $8.5 million to make this possible.

Edward de Bono is the consummate peripatetic educa-tor! Nearly every week he is in a different part of the world talking to government leaders, educators and heads of in-dustry and business. Some of his key engagements listed below demonstrate the broad appeal of Dr. de Bonos mes-sage: thinking can and should be taught if we are to meet the needs of todays fast-paced and changing world.

July 1994 he was awarded the Pioneer Prize in the field of thinking at the International Conference on Thinking at M.I.T. in Boston. A recent survey by the European Creativ-ity Association of its members showed that 40% consider Dr. de Bono as the greatest influence in the field of creativ-ity. This was far ahead of any other nominee.

In DuPont, we have many good examples of how out technical people have applied Dr. de Bonos lateral thinking techniques to suc-cessfully solve difficult problems.

Source: David Tanner Ph.D., Technical Director, DuPont.

The complexity and pace of contemporary life being what they are, de Bono's course should be an essential curriculum for the human race.

Source: Alex Kroll, Chairman & President, Yong & Rubican.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

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Its difficult for anyone to put a precise value on Edward de Bonos work and expertise. His views on thinking and creating are persuasive and cumulative.

Jeremy Bullmore, Chairman, J. Walter Thompson Company

Dr. de Bonos course builds up your thinking skills quickly and enjoyably and you then find yourself using the skills instinctively in approaching all situations. Leaders in every fieldfrom skilled labor to nuclear physics, from manufacturing to sellinghave this in common : the ability to think clearly. Ive seen in my own organization how de Bonos concepts have triggered ideas, enthusiasm and positivismat every level of personnel.

Source: Paul MacCready, Founder/President Aero Vironment Inc., known as the Father of Human Powered Flight.

I definitely know of Dr. de Bono and am an admirer of his work. We live in an information economy, where we have to live by what comes out of our minds.

Source: John Sculley, Chairman, President and CEO, Apple Com-puter Inc.

It is a function of clarity of de Bonos approach that his thinking course works well with school children or executives.

Source: John Naisbitt, Author of Megatrends 2000.

We all hang on to assumptions of the past to make conclusions about the future de Bono teaches us to challenge such assumptions and develop new creative solutions to problems.

Source: Philip L Smith, President, General Foods Corporation

Lateral Thinking really transformed my approach to business problems.

Source: A. Weinberg, Management Consultant, NYC


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Chapter TwoMajor Training Concepts

Lateral ThinkingLateral Thinking is a way of thinking that seeks a solu-

tion to an intractable problem through unorthodox meth-ods or elements that would normally be ignored by logical thinking.

Edward de Bono divides thinking into two processes. He calls one vertical thinking that is, using of logic, the traditional-historical analytical method. The other, how-ever, he calls lateral thinking, which involves disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle. From a practice point of view, many leader today believe that when you are faced with fast-changing trends, fierce competition, and the need to work miracles despite tight budgets, you need lateral thinking in order to get at new, creative solutions and forge new strategies.

Developing breakthrough ideas does not have to be the result of luck or a shotgun effort. De Bonos proven meth-ods provide a deliberate, systematic process that will result in innovative thinking. Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves team-work, productivity and as a result, more profit. Today, bet-ter quality and better service are essential, but they are not enough. Creativity and innovation are the only engines that will drive lasting, global success.

Our minds are trained to find typical and predictable solutions to problems. Lateral thinking will also helps with strategic planning and thinking outside the box of every-day issues.


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The Need for Creative Thinking Here are some particular thinking strategies or meth-

ods that have been derived from Edward de Bonos main teaching. They are to be found on his website, under the Training header.

MAJOR TRAINING CONCEPTS

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AlternativesFor gaining new ground and breed new ideas, we need

to brainstorm for alternative solutions. Sometimes we do not look beyond the obvious alternatives. Sometimes we do not look for alternatives at all. The method shows how to extract the concept behind a group of alternatives and then use it to generate further alternatives.

Focus When and how to change the focus of our thinking?

The discipline of defining our focus and sticking to it. The attitude of focusing on matters that are not problem areas.

ChallengeBreaking free from the limits of the accepted ways of

operating is crucial in creative thinking. Finding new solu-tions is always a challenge, for the the present way of do-ing things is not necessarily the best. Challenge thus is not an attack or criticism. It is rather the willingness to explore the reasons why we do things the way we do and whether there are any alternatives.

Random EntryRandom entry is used in a game-like setting, for brain-

storming purposes. It helps gaining new insights through using unconnected input to open up new lines of thinking.


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Provocation and MovementGenerating provocative statements and then using

them to build new ideas is the focus of this method. It is set to explore the nature of perception and how it limits our creativity.

The various techniques are designed to challenge these limitations. Movement is a new mental operation that we can use as an alternative to judgment. It allows us to de-velop a provocative idea into one that is workable and re-alistic.

HarvestingAt the end of a creative thinking session one takes note

of specific ideas that seem practical and have value. We need to also make a deliberate harvesting effort to collect ideas and concepts that are less well developed, for they can be improved later on and may contain valuable new insights.

The Treatment of IdeasHow to develop ideas and shape them to fit an organi-

zation or situation? The aim is for you to leave the work-shop with skills you have practiced and can apply imme-diately on return to your home or workplace.


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Six Thinking Hats

People are seeking quality everywhere except in the most important areathe quality of thinking. We need bet-ter thinking methods in order to make full use of our avail-able intelligence and experience.

As organizations reduce the number of people em-ployed, they need to get the maximum benefit from those remaining, including the maximum output from their thinking.


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Current thinking is dominated by adversarial thinking, which is a form of thinking based on the idea that there is always conflict in the world. Consequently, the mode of discussion revolves around argument, the purpose being to defeat your opponent and by doing so discover the truth. Adversarial thinking serves a purpose. However, it is not the only way of thinking and in some circumstances it has limitations. Six Thinking Hats offers a practical alternative. It encourages not adversarial but cooperative thinking, ex-ploration and innovation.

It is often assumed that intelligence goes hand in hand with thinking. In fact, very intelligent people are in danger of becoming poor thinkers. This is because they fall into the intelligence trap. That is, they use their intelligence to entrench themselves in support of one point of view. Even though you have a fantastic sports car you may be a poor driver. Similarly those with excellent minds may use them inadequately. Thinking and driving are skills that can be taught and improved upon.

The Six Thinking Hats Workshop is a powerful one day hands-on training to help business executives break out of their thinking ruts using techniques found in Dr. Ed-ward de Bonos landmark book Six Thinking Hats. I have conducted Six Hats training for for a major hotel chain in Singapore, back in 1998, and this opened my eyes to the gruesome lack of creativity at the department head level in that 5-star hotel. Working for other clients, I subsequently found out that my experience was not an exception, and I


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became aware of all the emotional blockages people get stuck with because of our completely inadequate school systems.

The Six Thinking Hats is an extremely simple and pow-erful training method. This powerful simplicity, together with the practical nature of the method, has led to its adop-tion by major corporations, among them IBM, NTT, Bell Canada, Federal Express, Eli Lilly, BA, BAA and Rockwell International.

SimplicityBusiness strategies should be simple enough so that the

return on investment is not impaired by unnecessary and widely ineffective bureaucracy. This seems to be obvious but it is neglected even in major companies today. To in-crease simplicity means to remove age-old roadblocks and barriers that are the result of following traditional methods and procedures without questioning their effectiveness, thus the result of keeping things simple is more employee and customer satisfaction.

Free employees get to think through new ideas more quickly; this will lead the company to bring about market innovations more timely and efficiently.

There are few things more annoying and frustrating in work than dealing with a piece of complex machinery or a cumbersome process which will not do what you need to be done. Overly complex work processes on a daily basis


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lead to stress, anxiety, frustrationeven ragefollowed by apathy and depression. But you do not have to be a victim.

Now you can get the tools and support to move your company in exactly this direction. Simplicity is a new course which is invaluable to companies looking to de-complexify their business processes and thus, their lives.

If your organization is implementing practical ways to streamline products and processes, you can become more effective, efficient and user-friendly.

Simplicity teaches how to put an end to habits that are no longer necessary, to stop duplication of tasks, and to challenge every aspect of business so that you can perform at a higher level in all areas.

In Simplicity, an instructor-led training event plus on-going follow-up plan, you will learn how to institute crea-tive techniques like shredding, reframing tasks, bulk-and-exceptions, and historical review to shift group thinking to a challenge mode where moving from complex to simple is the name of the game.

FacilitationWhat if you could walk into any meeting, with any

group of people and help them be more effective? Can you imagine how sought after you would be? And how pro-ductive your meetings would become?

This new course shows how to combine tools from all three core tools to become an expert facilitator for any kind


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of meeting. Get employees engaged and help them accom-plish much morebefore, during, and after attending the new kinds of meetings you will plan and facilitate for them.

This instructor-led workshop teaches practical tools; it requires multiple, coached facilitation practices and in-cludes many useful resources to support you in applying your new techniques:

Executive portfolio with room for all your facilitator visuals;

Complete facilitator handbook (we call it the facilita-tors Bible!);

Exercise book to collect all the tips you get and think-ing you do during the workshop;

Facilitation cards to deal yourself a visual map of the agenda youre planning;

Table mats that engage your meeting participants in tracking group progress;

Slide rules so participants can easily call to mind the steps in the de Bono thinking methods;

Capture cards for writing, sorting, and assessing ideas generated;

Energy dots to indicate top priority ideas and to measure buy-in on decisions made;

A catalogue of colorful, practical facilitation supplies, both de Bono specific and generic.


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Chapter ThreeBook Reviews

The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967)

The Mechanism of Mind (1969)

Tactics (1991)

Serious Creativity (1992)

Sur/Petition (1992)

The Use of Lateral ThinkingNew York: Penguin, 1967, reedited 1990

The Use of Lateral Thinking is one of de Bonos first publications, a book written in the 1960s; but it is one of his most important books.

ReviewIt seems that few have understood the book when it

appeared more than forty years ago. In the first chapter of the booklet, the author introduces the idea of lateral think-ing and defines it as a concept.

Orthodox education usually does nothing to encourage lat-eral thinking habits and positively inhibits them with the need to conform ones way through the successive examina-tion hoops. /15

The second and third chapters prepare the ground for the main part of the study which unfolds as a meticulous examination of perception habits. In these chapters, the


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author makes interesting remarks about how ideas are born. Where are ideas coming from? How to generate new ideas? Truly, these questions are important not only for art-ists, writers or designers, but also for business leaders. We can observe in recent years that it is surprisingly not al-ways large corporations but more often than not mid-sized or small companies that are leading the competition by their intelligent and novel approach, focused customer care and an effective cycle of innovation. For de Bono, this was not new thirty years ago.

He wrote that it is not possible to look in a differ-ent direction by looking harder in the same direction. He thought that for innovation, the tough, hard-working approach is dysfunctional, which is why he advocated flexible intelligence as the prime mover for ultimate success.

One of the major tasks of lateral thinking is to identify and overcome dominant ideas because a dominant idea can be a real obstacle in the creative thinking process. In every business, dominant ideas are very subtly and often imper-ceptibly built into the system through the formulation of strategies, marketing slogans, habits and traditions, the archaic we have always done it that way and it has worked for us. In the fifth chapter, the author summarizes his thorough examination of thinking habits and writes:

BOOK REVIEWS

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With most situations, what starts as a temporary and provi-sional manner of looking at them soon turns into the only possible way, especially if encouraged by success./68

Quotes Lateral thinking is not a new, magic formula

but simply a different and more creative way of using the mind. /6

Creative thinking is a special part of lateral thinking which covers a wider field. /14

Orthodox education usually does nothing to encourage lateral thinking habits and posi-tively inhibits them with the need to conform ones way through the successive examina-tion hoops. () Lateral thinking is a matter of awareness and practice - not revelation. /15

The full development of an idea may well take years of hard work but the idea itself may arrive in a flash of insight. /16-17

It is frightening (or exiting) to contemplate how many new ideas are lying dormant in already collected information that is now put together in one way and could be rearranged in a better way. () It is said that the great Napoleon found it just as difficult to get rid of his wifes dog as he did to get rid of the powerful armies sent against him. /18


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Once a new idea springs into existence it cannot be unthought. /20

It is not possible to look in a different direc-tion by looking harder in the same direction. /21

To realize that a dominant idea can be an ob-stacle instead of a convenience is the first principle of lateral thinking. /29

With most situations, what starts as a tempo-rary and provisional manner of looking at them turns into the only possible way, espe-cially if encouraged by success. /69

The mind divides the continuity of the world around us into discrete units. () When the same division has been made over and over again, the units come to acquire an identity of their own. /71

The fluidity of a situation where nothing is rigid and everything is doubled all the time makes vertical thinkers extremely uncom-fortable. Yet it is from this limitless potential of chaos that new ideas are formed by lateral thinking. /79

BOOK REVIEWS

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The Mechanism of MindNew York: Penguin, 1969, reedited 1990

The second of the five books I am reviewing is a booklet that develops and elaborates Edward de Bonos approach to creative thinking, as it

was first exposed in The Use of Lateral Thinking.

ReviewThe book is uncanny in that the author examines with

scientific exactitude how our brain handles perception and how it processes information.

Using many examples for demonstrating his theory, Edward de Bono concludes that the specific memory sur-face that the brain uses for information processing is in it-self a highly unreliable system. In Part II, 29: Overcoming the Limitations, de Bono writes:

The errors, faults and limitations of information-processing on the special memory-surface are inescapable because they


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follow directly from the nature of the organization of the surface. /218

In the next four chapters of the study, Edward de Bono analyzes the process of thinking. He divides thinking into four categories, natural thinking, logical thinking, mathemati-cal thinking and lateral thinking. He then discusses each of these modes of thinking.

Natural thinking that de Bono also calls simple or primi-tive thinking is characterized by being fluent yet its very fluency is the source of its errors.

This mode of thinking, de Bono says, is the natural way the memory surface behaves and its thought-flow is im-mediate, direct and basically adequate.

Logical thinking is characterized by the management of no, most logical processes being forms of binary equations of identity and non-identity. Logical thinking is seen by de Bono as a tremendous improvement over natural thinking, in spite of the limitations that he pointed out in detail.

Mathematical thinking is judged by de Bono as useful, however with the limitation that it is more adequate to de-scribe things than people.

Lateral thinking as a genuine mode of thinking has been developed by Edward de Bono himself.

The purpose of lateral thinking is to counteract both the er-rors and the limitations of the special memory-surface./236

BOOK REVIEWS

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De Bono states that lateral thinking is concerned with making the best possible use of the information that is al-ready available in the memory surface.

He then gives examples to illustrate in which ways lat-eral thinking is essentially different from vertical thinking. To say it with a slogan, lateral thinking is a way of thinking that lets a door open for the unexpected to occur; in other words, with lateral thinking you may not know what you are looking for until after you have found it.

There are several broad characteristics that show the obvious usefulness of lateral thinking.

Edward de Bono discusses them one after the other in his book:

Seeking alternatives

Thinking non-sequentially

Undoing selection processes

Shifting attention

Giving random input

I do not need to further comment this brilliant study which bears the stroke of genius. I guess that it was this book that laid the foundation for de Bonos overwhelming success as a think tank and business coach later on.

Strangely enough, then, this booklet is the least known and perhaps the least popular among all his books. But for


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one who is seriously interested in the foundations of lat-eral and of creative thinking, it is an absolute must-read.

Quotes This book is to do with the way the brain be-

comes mind. It may be that the brain is not too difficult to understand, but too easy. Mat-ters are often made more and more complex by the ability of man to play elaborate games that feed on themselves to create bewildering structures of immense intricacy, which ob-scure rather than reveal. The only thing these structures do reveal is that man has the abil-ity and the compulsion to play such concep-tual games. /7

Of its own accord the brain does not seek to understand and explain, but to create expla-nationsand that is a very different thing. The explanations may be highly acceptable without having much relevance to what is being explained. Can one escape from the cir-cular self-satisfaction of elaborate philosophi-cal description? In this book the brain is de-scribed as the mechanical behavior of me-chanical units. It is the organization of these units that provides the mechanism of mind. /7

Systems do not have to be complicated or un-intelligible, or even dressed in jargon. A sys-

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tem is just an arrangement of circumstances that makes things happen in a certain way. The circumstances may be metal grids, elec-tronic components, warm bodies, rules and regulations or anything else. In each case what actually happens is determined by the nature of the system. One can take the func-tion of the system for granted and become interested in how it is carried out. /17

If you want to get your shoes cleaned in an English hotel you simply leave them over-night in the corridor outside your room. Many an unhappy Englishman has learned that in America shoes treated in this way dis-appear never to be seen again. Left outside the door, the shoes are regarded as a rather eccentric form of tipping or garbage disposal. The first useful thing that can come out of knowledge of a system is the avoiding of those errors that arise through thinking the system to be something that it is not. /18

The second useful thing is awareness of the limitations of the system. No matter how good they may be at performing their best functions, most systems are rather poor when it comes to performing the opposite func-tions. One would no more go racing in a shopping car than shopping in a racing car. When one can, one chooses the system to fit the purpose. More often there is no choice,


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and this means that a single system will per-form certain functions well but others not so well. For instance the brain system is well suited to developing ideas but not so good at generating them. Knowing about the limita-tions of a system does not by itself alter them. But by being aware of the nature of the sys-tem one can make deliberate adjustments. /18

In the early days of the instant breath-test for drinking drivers one drunken driver drove his car into a lamp-post and wrecked it. As he sat waiting in the wreckage for the police to come and test and charge him, he remem-bered the nature of the system. So he pulled out a hip-flask and started to drink some more. When the police came he explained to them that the shock of the accident had caused him to have a drink. Since his car was no longer drivable he knew that he could not be held to have the necessary intent to drive, as required by the system. What his blood alcohol level had been at the time of the acci-dent was, of course, no longer determinable. /18-19

Birds do not have propellers any more than human beings move around on wheels. Wings and propellers are different but fulfill the same flight function; legs and wheels are

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different but fulfill the same movement func-tion. /21

Laughter is a fundamental characteristic of the brain system but not of the computer sys-tem. And with laughter goes creativity. It will be a sinister day when computers start to laugh, because that will man they are capable of a lot of other things as well. /22

It is perfectly possible that a computer could be deliberately programmed to imitate the functions of the brain system, probably even to the extent of laughter and creativity. But this would not mean that the two systems were functioning in a similar manner except on the final level, that is to say the outcome level. It is quite easy to tell someone to draw a square, but much more cumbersome to give him the mathematical definition of a square, though the outcome would be the same. A similarity of outcomes does not imply a simi-larity of process. /22

The elaboration of a few basic principles gives rise to the richest musical symphony. The elaboration of a few basic principles in physics explains much of the universe. The simple basic process of evolution by random mutation and survival of the fittest ultimately leads to a complicated variety of species. /25


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When one starts from the simple basic units it is easy to see how they can be built up into complicated structures capable of compli-cated functions. But when one starts from the complicated structures or functions then it is not so easy to see the basic processes. In this book the intention is not to break down the complicated behavior of the brain system into simple basic processes, but to show that simple basic processes can be put together to give a system that is capable of as compli-cated behavior as the brain system. /25

This book has been concerned with building up, principle by principle, a type of information-processing system. This system has been capable of such things as the direc-tion of attention and thinking. It has also been shown that there are certain inherent errors in the information-processing behavior of this type of system, just as there are certain tremendous advantages. Th advantages by far outweigh the disadvantages, even though more attention has been paid to the latter. The system has been called a special memory-surface, and it is activity on this sur-face that has been described. /266

There is evidence in the brain for a two-stage memory system consisting of a short-term memory and a long-term memory. The short-term memory could possibly take the form of

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an increased ease of activation of a synapse after the tiring factor had worn off. It could also take the form of circuits of nervous activ-ity which circled round and round in endless loops for some time after a pattern of syn-apses had been activated. There is a special method of depolarizing the brain which stops nervous activity in an area. If this method is applied to the surface of an animal brain soon after some event it can prevent that event be-ing recorded in memory. If it is applied much later then the memory is not interfered with. This suggests that the short-term emory has to do with nerve activity but the long-term one does not. /268

Of what use is consideration of the mechani-cal structure of mind? The brain is an ines-capably physical system with a mechanical way of working. From a consideration of the possible working of the brain may come use-ful conclusions; from a dogmatic mysticism about its function will come nothing. /273

The most important thing that arises from a consideration of the information handling in the type of system proposed is the nature of the errors and limitations which are inherent in the system. The very great efficiency of the system taken as a whole carries with it cer-tain inherent faults. /275


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Basically the system is very poor in updating itself. There is no efficient mechanism for do-ing this. In fact the accretion method of treat-ing information inevitably leads to the ar-rangement of the information being slightly out of date. This is due to the importance of time of arrival of information and the persis-tence of established patterns. The arrange-ment of information on the memory-surface must always be less than the best possible arrangement. /275

The more specific faults of the system include its divisive tendencies, which create artificial entities and artificial separations between them. This is the phenomenon that has been described as polarization. The memory-surface efficiently creates patterns out of the confused information offered it by the envi-ronment. /275

But then these patterns take over, and instead of being a self-organization of available in-formation they actually direct what informa-tion can be accepted. Once the patterns take over as clich patterns or myths, then the prospects of changing such patterns are even more remote. Where the patterns are correct this is obviously an advantage, but where the patterns are imperfect it is another matter. /276

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Leonardo da Vincis diaries were lost for cen-turies for the simple reason that they were not lost at all. It seems that they had been mis-filed in some library. Had they been truly lost then there might have been a better chance of finding them. So it is with informa-tion that is incorrectly filed on the memory-surface by being fixed in a clich pattern. /276

Once one is aware of the faults of the information-processing system one comes to realize that the main information sin is arro-gance. Arrogance, dogmatism or a closed mind of any sort are so insecurely based on the fallible information-processing system that they would be pathetic if they were not sometimes dangerous. /276

For the same reasons the need to be always right, the insistence on this in education, and the basing of self-esteem on this need, cannot be justified unless it is tempered with the awareness that for some part of the time one is inevitably going to be wrong. It is these inherent faults of the information-processing system that make lateral thinking essential. Insight is so haphazard a mechanism that it cannot be expected to reduce the gap between the cur-rent arrangement of information and the best possible arrangement with any reliability. The purpose of lateral thinking is to bring


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about this insight type of re-structuring of information. /276

The sequential process of vertical thinking as developed in logical and mathematical think-ing are incredibly effective when one things how clumsy natural thinking is. Yet these se-quential processes are not effective in bring-ing about the insight type of re-structuring of information. One cannot change a sequential pattern by developing it further. One needs some method of disrupting the sequence to allow another one to form. Lateral thinking is not an alternative to vertical thinking but an essential complement, which is made neces-sary by the nature of the information-processing system. Later thinking increases the effectiveness of vertical thinking by pro-viding direction. One cannot look in the right direction by looking more efficiently in the wrong direction. /276-277

There are, however, situations in which the mere disruptive effect of material thinking is sufficient. Once certain myths and patterns have been disrupted then the formation of better patterns may follow on its own. Lateral thinking has nothing to do with chaos for the sake of chaos. Disruption of a pattern in lat-eral thinking is only in order to let a better pattern form. /277

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Far from reducing the importance of emo-tions, the nature of the special memory-surface elevates them into an essential posi-tion. The special memory-surface is a passive system, and on it information organizes itself into patterns. () These considerations are fairly obvious. What is less obvious is that even abstract intellectual processes such as logical thinking would be impossible without emotion. /278

If information is the door that gives access to the world, then emotion is not just the paint on the door but the handle with which the door is opened. Emotion is essential to information-processing, not something apart. The division between intellect and emotion is another of the harmful polarizations that arise from the divisive tendencies of the sys-tem. Too often, emotion is thought of in terms of the caricatures and grotesqueries that are so often put forward as the stuff of emotion with the admirable purpose of attracting at-tention. /

The division between art and science is an-other of these polarizations. The two are but aspects of the same thing. Art is science with instant information. Science is art with pro-gressive information. In both cases the aes-thetics and the emotions are the same. /279


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Since emotion is the major source of variabil-ity on the special memory-surface one might expect there to be an optimum level of emo-tionality for true creativity. At less than this level there would be too little change, at more than this level there would be too much fixity. It is true that the patterns fixed by over-emotionality might be worthwhile for their unusualness, but there would not be a crea-tive fluidity about them. /279

The essential feature of the special memory-surface is that it is a passive system which provides an opportunity for information to organize itself. Much of the information comes from the environment, but a good deal is supplied by internal patterns which repre-sent the needs and the emotions of the body that is using the memory-surface. /280

The major theme of Eastern philosophy is the arbitrariness and artificiality of the separate units that have been carved out of the envi-ronment by the selfishness of the human spirit. The ultimate aim is to dissolve these separate unitsand the self as one of themback into the continuum of nature. Western philosophy, on the other hand, emphasizes the usefulness and sometimes the perma-nence of certain patterns. The ultimate aim is not to get rid of patterns, as in the East, but to achieve the right patterns. /280

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Serious CreativityUsing the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas

New York: Penguin, 1992, reprinted 1996

In Serious Creativity, de Bono continues the line of thought previously exhibited in The Use of Lateral Thinking and The Mechanism of Mind.

However, Serious Creativity is a more elaborated study of lateral think-ing in its broadest and most practical dimensions.

ReviewThe book consists of three major parts. In Part One, Edward de Bono writes about the need for

creative thinking and shows its theoretical and practical applications.

The author leaves no doubt that his approach is not destined for artists and creators, but primarily for business people. Thus, not artistic creativity or inspirational creativ-ity is the main field of application of de Bonos approach to


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creativity, but creativity used for developing new and prof-itable ideas for marketing products and for succeeding in the competitive world of trade. Accordingly, the style and the language of the book are ideally suited for entrepre-neurs and executives, and it provides what the author calls take-away value. Interestingly, and unlike the two predeces-sors, lateral thinking is now only one element among oth-ers within the ten sub-chapters that throw different lights on the important question for every innovative company: how can we find and develop new and successful ideas?

Part Two is a detailed and highly elaborated analysis of the use of lateral thinking in the brainstorming process.

The quality and exclusiveness of the material presented here is such that it by far outreaches the competence of a creativity manager or innovation department; but on the other hand, corporate leaders or executive committees will seldom have the time and tranquil setting needed to digest the innovative ideas and creative tools presented in this book, and to make the utmost profit out of it. It is therefore important to emphasize what de Bono repeatedly suggests in his books, that is, to create special Concept R&D Depart-ments that are to be created in the future for the purpose of providing new organizational concepts for the growth and expansion of any company.

The material presented in the book is so vast that it surpasses the space to discuss it in a book review, so much the more as de Bono has included his famous Six Thinking Hats brainstorming technique among sixteen other creative

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thinking techniques that are worth to be studied and tried out in practice.

The third part of the study is concerned with the prac-tical application of creative thinking. This chapter is indis-pensable for anyone who wants to setup training seminars or workshops on serious creativity.

It is written in a clear and practical style. Every sugges-tion the author made here is useful in the day-to-day run-ning of seminars or company workshops on creativity. Not to forget the Appendixes which are jewels for the training practitioner:

Appendix One: Lateral Thinking Techniques;

Appendix Two: Use of Lateral Thinking Techniques;

Appendix Three: Harvesting Checklist;

Appendix Four: Treatment of Ideas Checklist.

To summarize, this book has more practical and direct-to-use value than its two predecessors which however have laid the theoretical foundation so that this book could come to existence. De Bonos brilliant diction and his smart in presenting highly complex content makes this book, among all others by the same author, a true enrichment of any business library.


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Quotes Although it is now beginning to do a little bit

about the direct teaching of thinking as a skill, education does very little indeed / about teaching creative thinking. /Introduc-tion 2-3

If every valuable creative idea is indeed logi-cal in hindsight, then it is only natural to suppose, and to claim, that such ideas could have been reached by logic in the first place and that creativity is unnecessary. This is the main reason why, culturally, we have never paid serious attention to creativity. I would say that over 95 percent of academics world-wide still hold this view. Sadly, this view is totally wrong. /Introduction 3

In a passive information system (externally organized system), it is perfectly correct to claim that any idea that is logical in hindsight must be accessible to logic in the first place. But it is not so in an active information sys-tem (self-organizing system) in which the asymmetry of patterns means that an idea be be logical and even obvious in hindsight but invisible to logic in the first place. /Introduc-tion 3

It is difficult to condemn brainstorming be-cause it has some value and does sometimes produce results; but, in my experience, it is

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old-fashioned and inefficient. We can do much better with deliberate systematic tech-niques. Nor is there any need for creativity to be a group process as in brainstorming. An individual can be even more creative on his or her ownwith the proper skills. /Intro-duction 4

Associated with brainstorming has been the notion that deliberate creative thinking has to be crazy or off-the-wall in order to be effec-tive. This notion of craziness is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of creativity and is fostered by those who do not really understand the true nature of provocation. Because provocation is different from normal experience and because anything crazy is also different from normal experience, it is assumed the two are the same. /Introduction 5

I regard creative thinking (lateral thinking) as a special type of information handling. It should take its place alongside our other methods of handling information: mathemat-ics, logical analysis, computer simulation, and so on. /Introduction 6

I believe that the crude word creativity cov-ers a wide range of different skills. In this book I do not set out to talk about artistic creativity. I have been taught by playwrights,


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composers, poets, and rock musicians that they sometimes use my techniques of lateral thinking. That is always nice to hear, but I am not setting out to improve the skills of artistic creativity as such. I am very specifically con-cerned with the creative skills needed to change concepts and perceptions. /4

My preference is to look directly at the be-havior of self-organizing information sys-tems. These systems are patterning systems. They make and use patterns. From an analy-sis of the behavior and potential behavior in such systems we can get a very clear idea of the nature of creativity. () The logic of crea-tivity is the logic of patterning systems /4

Understanding the logic of creativity does not itself make you more creative. But it does make you aware of the necessity for creativ-ity. It also explains the design of certain crea-tive techniques and shows why apparently illogical techniques are actually quite logical within the logic of patterning systems. Above all, understanding the logic of creativity mo-tivates a person to do something about crea-tivity. /5

Red Telephones were pay phones maintained at a high standard and owned by a private company that has since been bought by Aus-tralian Telecom. The difficulty was that in

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Australia local calls were not timed; for the same initial cost, a user could talk for a long time. () In the end he id find a new ap-proach. He arranged with the makers of the telephone handset to put a lot of lead into the handset. This made the handset heavy and long calls became very tiring. Apparently the idea worked, and to this day Red Telephones are unusually heavy. /6

The neglect of humor by traditional philoso-phers, psychologists, information scientists, and mathematicians clearly shows that they were only concerned with passive, externally organized information systems. It is only very recently that mathematicians have be-come interested in nonlinear and unstable systems (chaos, catastrophe theory, and so on). /8

In an active system the information and the surface are active and the information or-ganizes itself without the help of an external organizer. That is why such systems are called self-organizing. /8

What computers find so hard to do (pattern recognition) the brain does instantly and automatically. /11

The brain can only see what it is prepared to see (existing patterns). So when we analyze


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data we can only pick out the idea we al-ready have. /11

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience. /17

Changing patterns is just as difficult as trying to give a word a totally new meaning when-ever you choose to. Words are patterns of perception and experience. /17

Doing the old things better is not going to be enough. There is a need to do things differ-ently. /19

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business and school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is pre-pared to see. /24

The systematic creative techniques of lateral thinking can be used formally and deliber-ately in order to generate new ideas and to change perceptions. These techniques and tools can be learned and practiced and ap-plied when needed. The tools are directly de-rived from a consideration of the logic of per-ception, which is the logic of a self-

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organizing information system that forms and then uses patterns. /51

The production of the ingredients for infor-mation processing is the role of perception. It is perception that organizes the world into the xs and ys that we then process with mathematics. It is perception that gives us the observations or propositions that then handle with logic. It is perception that gives us the words and the choice of words with which we think about anything. /57

While we have developed excellent process-ing systems, we have done very little about perception - because we have not understood perception. We have always assumed that perception operates, like processing, in a pas-sive, externally organized information sys-tem. That makes perception impossible to understand. It is only in the last twenty years that we have begun to understand the behav-ior of self-organizing information systems and self-organizing neural networks. Now we have a conceptual model with which we can begin to understand perception, humor, and creativity. /58

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inade-quacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic. /58


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If we set out to attack something, then others will rush to defend the existing way of doing things. A lot of unnecessary time is used in attack and defense. Even worse, there will be a polarization between those who defend the status quo and those who seem to be attack-ing it. So it is much better to avoid judgment and to indicate that there is no attack on the status quo but just an exploration of other possibilities. Such possibilities would never replace the existing methods unless the new ideas could be clearly shown to be superior. /105

The creative challenge simply refuses to ac-cept that the current way is necessarily the best way. /105

Because the creative challenge is not an at-tacking challenge, even the most useful po-larizations can be challenged: is this the only way of looking at it? /118

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Sur/PetitionCreating Value Monopolies when

Everybody Else is Merely CompetingNew York: Fontana, 1992, HarperCollins, 1993

Edward de Bonos book Sur/Petition is very important. All the issues that he tackles in this extremely well-written book are still today hot issues, in the sense that they are unresolved so far in most businesses.

But let us ask, What is Sur/Petition? The basic subject matter of the book is the issue of creating value monopolies. Competing literally means struggling together, whereas surpeting, by contrast, means struggling ahead of others.

How to get ahead of your competitors? The answer is by offering more value, integrated value,

value that is yet unmatched by others and that, therefore, becomes a monopoly. As Dr. de Bono explains, value mo-nopolies are not illegal forms of business conduct because they serve the customer; they are specific solutions for the


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paradigm that Karl Albrecht called Total Quality Service or briefly TQS, as a parallel to Total Quality Management or TQM. This approach puts the customer first in the agenda, not housekeeping or the company tradition.

Value monopolies can only be created after brainstorm-ing has taken place which is based on a serious effort to un-derstand and value the needs of the customer.

It seems that presently multinational corporations are beginning to grasp the importance of giving the customer solutions that are of real value.

De Bono, as always, has looked into the future and of-fered solutions that most people, at the time of publishing the ideas, were not ready to grasp.

The example that de Bono cites regarding Ford strikes. He consulted Ford Britain to buy a company that owned large car parks all over Great Britain. He argued that cars are no more than a lump of engineering and that a cus-tomer who buys a car wants and needs more, and more service in the first place. One of those needs being the urge to find a parking lot in town, de Bonos idea seemed bril-liant. Now Ford could have connected a value to the exist-ing value car which would have created a value monop-oly for the company. De Bonos idea was precisely that at the entrance of those car parks a note would have been put that only Ford cars could enter themand no other cars.

However, Ford did not see the chance nor the need of its customers for more integrated value and thus did not follow the proposal.

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Some years ago, the popular German car maker Volks-wagen was brainstorming on the same lines and they cre-ated Volkswagen Bank as a result, and a free basic insurance for home and family, given free for every car buyer.

To make it round, third in the package was a credit card offer for new car customers. Not only did Volkswagen sell more cars, the Volkswagen Bank surprisingly for many became one of the most successful and effectively man-aged banks in Germany.

The example was inspiring. Mercedes-Benz and BMW followed suit and developed similar surplus-value con-cepts and opened their Mercedes Bank and BMW Bank.

What they give is even more. Every new customer, be-sides the afore-mentioned benefits, receives a credit card,


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that gives a range of benefits so numerous that it fills a lit-tle booklet.

De Bono always questions traditional ways of doing things and goes straight to the root of problems.

In the first chapter that is entitled What is Wrong with the Fundamentals? he calls efficiency and problem-solving mere maintenance procedures and concludes that only ef-fective solutions can bring success in the long run.

Today, most of the Fortune 500 companies have real-ized this and other of de Bonos early ideas, but when de Bono voiced these requirements twenty years ago, he was taken as a visionary with lacking sense for reality. As it is so often the case, in hindsight we see that he had more sense of reality than all his contradictors since what he predicted so many years ago is business reality today!

Reading Sur/Petition, you get a feeling that in most businesses, there is a desperate longing for more creativity while at the same time creative thinking is rejected as an illusion, time waster, or as something for artists only.

Intelligent ways of dealing with business, and effective solutions, in the past as today are the exception.

Even Fortune 500 companies that are the most likely to adopt strategies and fixes as de Bono suggests them, are not immune against old mistakes. The high turndown rate among Fortune 500s is an indicator for this fact. It is not enough to just understand the principles and to establish

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planning committees. The art of management is to walk the talk one wants all in the company to walk.

My experience has shown that often corporate leaders are well ready to follow the advice of consultants but they think that they themselves are beyond the need for consul-tancy. The hairy truth is that, in the contrary, the boss has to adopt the new attitude first and thoroughly walk it through before he can expect others down in the corporate hierar-chy to adopt it.

Interestingly, when we study successful entrepreneurs, we see that they intuitively apply the principles Edward de Bono writes about.

I would cite Bill Gates as an example; his extraordinary success is not chance and it is not just luck. What I found after having studied various sources about him as well as information received from people working with him is that he applies all these principles in his leadership style. Gates goes even beyond. He is one of the few entrepreneurs who voluntarily apply chaos principles in their management to


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get out of linear movement and into the magic of seren-dipitous strikes.

What is perhaps the final secret for the success in busi-ness is the combination of technical competence (the hard-ware) and people competence (the software).

What Microsoft has done to get out of the claws of its competition, and sur/pete was:

Creating value monopolies based upon precise knowl-edge regarding to what the mass customer expects and needs;

Intelligent concept design that gives a familiar look to all Microsoft software;

Superior striving for providing the utmost user-friendliness, intuitive handling and ease-of-use;

Very conscious and careful approach in customer care and follow-up;

Leading position in advancing new technologies, and courage and expertise to do so;

Most advanced approach for people care;

Very careful examination of what the competition is doing for quickly and often boldly sur/peting it.

A company that does not value its own achievements and strength will not succeed. However, high self-esteem, as de Bono observed, is in practice often replaced by com-placency. Complacency is such a destructive attitude that

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he devoted twelve pages, a whole subchapter, to its discus-sion.

More than once, de Bono reports that arrogance and complacency are what he found to be the two strongest im-pediments for implementing new customer-focused man-agement strategies.

A very interesting part of the book, for those who are not yet familiar with value-based management is chapter eight entitled The Three Stages of Business.

These three stages are outlined as

Product Values

Competitive Values

Integrated Values

It is only logical that at the end of this thorough study, de Bono suggests to implement Concept R&D Departments, a brilliant idea.

The author notes that in traditional business settings, it is still considered a threat to empower employees and to establish think tank groups.

As long as business or government is managed like the militaryand this was really the traditional way to man-age large corporations and government agencies all over the worldwe will not be able to move into management and leadership that is

Team driven instead of person driven;


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People driven instead of technology driven; Progressive, effective and ecological; Flexible and unbureaucratic.One of the purposes of Edward de Bonos contribu-

tions was to help us move away from this old management paradigm that has become archaic and ineffective, and im-plement an effective, sustainable and people-driven busi-ness management paradigm that is based upon values and the virtue of satisfying value-driven customer needs.

To summarize, this book that is not one of the most well-known Bono books, is yet one of the best produc-tions of the author. For all people concerned with management, it is one of the most original and valuable books on management success strate-gies that have ever been published. I would even go as far as saying

that it is a must-read for everyone who is in some way in-volved in leading people into the postindustrial era.

At the time de Bono wrote this book, most of his daring ideas were rejected by the mainstream management para-digm. The authors reputation as the think tank and trainer did not change this fact, nor the fact that among his clients were large multinational corporations. This is the some-what frustrating point of departure of the book in the authors own words:

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Government needs thinking very badly but does surpris-ingly little of it. () Business handles the analytical side of thinking quite well. But there is a need for improvement in the constructive, creative, and conceptual side. In the future, this is the aspect of thinking that is going to be essential for success./XX

With his habitual lucidity, Edward de Bono shows the present discrepancy between a new paradigm of quality management and the emphasis on housekeeping that used to be the flaw of traditional management.

Down the road, you have to provide values that cus-tomers want, writes de Bono.

We can only hope that both government and business leaders will comprehend and implement de Bonos futuris-tic ideas so that the new business culture will be more cus-tomer driven, more flexibly intelligent and more creative.


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TacticsThe Art and Science of Success

London: Pilot Productions Ltd., 1985Fontana, 1991

Harper & Collins, 1993

Edward de Bonos book Tactics is a thoroughly empirical study on the subject of success and the various factors that contribute to a person experiencing success. Together with a team of researchers, fifty-five

highly successful people from business, finance, sports, art and fashion were interviewed.

Excerpts of these interviews together with the authors very original classification of success into various catego-ries and subcategories make the core of this most unusual and highly readable book.

To be true, the book is a treasure! The information you get out of it is among the most valuable you can obtain not only for your business career but for your life as a whole.

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Most of the people interviewed show really uncommon views, high originality, and a daring, non-conventional, high-spirited, intelligent and bold approach to life, an approach that is never, in this form, taught or encouraged in school or university.

Let me start this review by having a look at the main characteristics that the author found to be valid for success in life and business:

Creative style;Energy, drive and direction;Confidence and self-confidence;Stamina and hard work;Effectiveness;Ruthlessness;Ability to cope with failure;Tactics.These were found to be the positively stimulating fac-

tors of success. Interestingly, not only the positive stimu-lants such as power, money or self-image were found to be contributing to success but also negative stimulants such as anxiety.

The latter view is uncommon. Especially the exponents of the positive thinking movement seem to suggest that a well-directed life is one free of anxiety. Nope! Very success-ful entrepreneurs such as Robert Holmes Court speak another language.


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Let me quote a passage in which de Bono summarizes the findings collected from different interviews on the mat-ter of anxiety:

It is interesting that with successful people the anxieties are propellant rather than retardant. The anxieties push the en-trepreneur forward rather than hold him back. There does not seem to be a search for the easy way or for security as such./60

Edward de Bono lists several traditional positions that he has seen to play a major role in success, such as

Being lucky;Being a little mad;Being very talented;Operating in a rapid growth field.

Lord Grade

An important part of the study deals with the way ideas are relevant for practice and for successful action.

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Lets see what one of the interviewees has to say on this subject:

Lord GradeThe ideas you want are real ideas; theyre not fanta-sies. There is a difference. The real ideas can be put into action. They are not dreams; theyre something real. And what gets the team confident is that the entire team, the whole company, is successful./38

Lord Grade


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The question of style emerges boldly in this study. De Bono observes that changing ones personal style and imi-tating somebody elses style is not a success formula.

Success is based upon polishing and refining ones per-sonal style, even though it may be a style that few people possess. In a paragraph entitled Characteristics of Typically Successful Styles, de Bono gives examples for energy, drive and direction as being one successful style among many.

This is what David Mahoney, named in Fortune Maga-zine as one of the ten toughest bosses in America, has to say about this subject:

David MahoneyI just keep moving every day as hard and fast as I can. High-intensity and high-voltage. Light comes from that, not from passivity. I insist we all do our best every day. Im intense in everything I do and I expect others will be, too. There may be timing fac-tors in it, good luck and fortune factors, but the question is, do you utilize it? Some of it you cant controlsome of it goes against youit works both ways. You run to daylightwhere you see the break you go. Most people arent even aware of whats happening around them. Two-thirds of the people dont know whats going on to them, personally./39

There are of course other styles, such as the creative and inspiring style of Alex Kroll, president of the worlds largest advertising agency, who transforms every challenge into a game-like arrangement that is inspiring himself and

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his staff for finding creative solutions. In addition, there are the managerial and the entrepreneurial styles. The question is if ego-based styles or can-do are original styles or if they are just attributes to other styles?

Alex Kroll

Chris Bonington who climbed Annapurna II, the Eiger North Wall, Kangur, Ogre, Annapurna South Face, and South-West Face of Everest says that its also the great drive to find something in yourself, or the curiosity of finding whether this can be done. The question if one can achieve some-thing daring and difficult is a constant tenor in ambitious peoples life. There is no security in this, no conviction. There is only intuition, and it can be very strong, as in case of Paul McCready who incarnates the can-do style or atti-tude. This man made the first plane that flies only by using muscle power, without any motor, and he says:


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Paul McCreadyI went single-mindedly and with considerable as-surance towards the goal./41

Nolan Bushnell, creator of the video game industry, worth $70 million after the first decade of running a com-pany with a $500 investment, says that he always feels like there is a solution. There we are indeed in the realm of an-ticipation, of sixth sense, of intuition.

Another style or style element is self-confidence and a certain amount of conceit. Roy Cohn, described by Esquire Magazine as a legal executioner the toughest, meanest, vilest and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America says:

You also have to have a certain amount of conceit, which leads you to believe that you and you alone can get things moving./42

In this chapter, de Bono examines all these possible styles and gives examples from the abundant material that the interviews provided to this purpose. He summarizes:

Develop your personal style and refine it;

Build on your strong points or characteristics;

Do not try to alter your weak points or characteristics;

Make sure that every choice or decision comply with your style;

Choose the circumstances that best fit your style;

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Be bold and egocentric;

Use failure as a shadow that gives dimensions to the picture.

And the author to comment: An inflated balloon is vulnerable, but that is the only way it is going to fly./57

The other chapters of the book deal with what triggers success, and what are the factors that may have a more subtle impact upon success.

Part II of the book teaches how to prepare for success and Part III points out six factors that are important to practice for everyone who sets out to be successful.

Strategy;Decision-making;Opportunity;Risk;Strategy for people as resources;Tactical play.I can only express my admiration for this careful and

precious study that has enriched my life in an extraordi-nary manner.

Every time I read again chapters from this book, it re-veals me new insights, horizons and hints for my life, and in addition lets me participate in the lives of highly suc-cessful people.


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BibliographyContextual Bibliography

Boldt, Laurence G.Zen and the Art of Making a LivingA Practical Guide to Creative Career DesignNew York: Penguin Arkana, 1993How to Find the Work You LoveNew York: Penguin Arkana, 1996Zen SoupTasty Morsels of Wisdom from Great Minds East & WestNew York: Penguin Compass, 1997The Tao of AbundanceEight Ancient Principles For Abundant LivingNew York: Penguin Arkana, 1999

Butler-Bowden, Tom50 Success ClassicsWinning Wisdom for Work & Life From 50 Landmark BooksLondon: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2004

De Bono, EdwardThe Use of Lateral ThinkingNew York: Penguin, 1967The Mechanism of MindNew York: Penguin, 1969

Serious CreativityUsing the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New IdeasLondon: HarperCollins, 1996Sur/PetitionLondon: HarperCollins, 1993TacticsLondon: HarperCollins, 1993First published in 1985

Borg, JamesPersuasion2nd EditionNew York: Pearson Books, 2008

Covey, Stephen R.The 8th HabitFrom Effectiveness to GreatnessLondon: Simon & Schuster, 2006The 3rd AlternativeSolving Lifes Most Difficult ProblemsLondon: Simon & Schuster, 2012

Hill, NapoleonThe Law of SuccessThe Master Wealth-Builders Complete and Original Lesson Plan for Achieving Your DreamsNew York: Penguin, 2008First published in 1928

Krause, Donald G.Sun TzuThe Art of War for ExecutivesLondon: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1995

Welch, JackWinningWith Suzy WelchNew York: HarperBusiness, 2005


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Zyman, SergioThe End of Marketing as We Know ItNew York: HarperCollins, 2000

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Personal Notes

edward de bono and the mechanism of mind

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