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Dr. Edward de Bono

Dr. Edward de Bono dedicated his life to teaching thinking as a skill. He designed thinking tools to apply in the practical world.

Born in Malta, Dr. de Bono received his initial education at St Edward’s College, Malta, and the Royal University of Malta, where he achieved a degree in medicine. Then as a Rhodes Scholar at Christchurch, Oxford, where he gained a degree in psychology and physiology and a D.Phil. in medicine. He received a Phd from Cambridge, a DDes from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and a LLD from Dundee. He had faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard.

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Photo credit Roy Zhao

He became interested in the nature and teaching of thinking while working in medical research investigating the self-organising nature of physiological systems. This led to his description of the behaviour of the mind as a self-organising system, (see his book Mechanism of Mind) and his interest in the development of lateral thinking to change perception.

 

Dr. de Bono originated many thinking methods that are widely used today. He originated the phrase Lateral Thinking—which has an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. He described Parallel Thinking, also known as the Six Thinking Hats® method as an alternative to argument.

He has written over 60 books and programmes, with translations into 43 languages, has been invited to lecture in 58 countries and has made three television series. His ideas have been sought by governments, not for profit organisations and many of the leading corporations in the world, such as IBM, Boeing, BT (UK), Nokia (Finland), Mondadori (Italy), Siemens (Germany), 3M (Germany), NTT (Japan), GM, Kraft, Nestle, Du Pont, Prudential, Shell, Bosch (Germany), Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young and many others. The global consultancy, Accenture, chose him as one of the fifty most influential business thinkers.

More in depth biographies are available here

Explain PO and Mo

Dr. de Bono explains Provocation

Dr. de Bono explains Movement

The teaching of creative thinking

Read more on Dr. de Bono's explanation of thinking as a transferable skill or download as a PDF document.

Research

We are building a database of academic research into the effectiveness of Dr. Edward de Bono's work. Read more here.

The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation

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The Institute was established in 1992 and offers a wide range of courses and events to University of Malta students and to the general public in four interrelated subject areas, Creativity, Innovation Management, Entrepreneurship, Future Studies. More

3 WaysToContact
de Bono

Edward de Bono Ltd, trading as “de Bono”, owns the intellectual property (IP), including the trademarks and copyrights in works originated by Dr. Edward de Bono.

de Bono was established to develop, promote, licence and protect the work of Dr. Edward de Bono in teaching thinking as a skill. We provide tools to change the future.

Training in the de Bono methods, in the form of in-house training, certifications, or public seminars, is available from authorised trainers. These trainers have developed a high level of proficiency with the de Bono methods and maintain a high standard through recertification. While certified they form part of a global network of trainers who use authorised materials.

Ways of making contact with de Bono

If you have benefited from using Dr. de Bono's methods and would like to share your story then please do so here.

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