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Dr. Edward de Bono

"You can analyse the past, but you need to design the future."
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Invite our experts to help you apply the de Bono® methods to address topics that are important to your organisation.

Use the My Thoughts application to help you generate and develop ideas.

Test your lateral thinking skill on  challenges.

Books

 

Learn how to be a more creative and constructive thinker. Dr. de Bono has written over 40 years on the topic of solving problems and creating opportunity.

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Training in de Bono® methods

Our purpose is to help you improve collaboration, problem-solving, innovation, and decision making.

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Free thinking lessons

The lessons can be used for home schooling or in a classroom.

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We provide tools to change the future.

Dr. Edward de Bono, the originator of the term Lateral Thinking, dedicated his life to inspiring, encouraging and enabling us to be better and more creative thinkers. He created The Six Thinking Hats® method to enable individuals and teams to be more receptive to new ideas and to develop them constructively.

The de Bono methods are a means of breaking old patterns and creating new ones. We don't tell you what to think but we show you how to think for yourself, both creatively and inclusively.

de Bono is the organisation established to develop, promote, licence and protect the work of Dr. Edward de Bono in teaching thinking as a skill. 

The de Bono methods are available to learn about in books, in a free program for schools and families, and via our training partners for use in organisations as a practical way to improve collaboration, communication, and creativity.

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Case studies of the de Bono team in action

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Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is a structured approach for thinking differently.

Edward de Bono developed his methods from an understanding of how the mind works as a self-organising pattern recognition system. While this Mechanism of Mind helps us develop routines for dealing with a complex world, it also locks in our views and makes it hard to change perception at will. He explains how to structure your thinking so that you can create alternatives at will.

Go to LateralThinking.com and your computer or smartphone will assist you in applying Lateral Thinking to anything you want to think about.

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Parallel Thinking®
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Six Thinking Hats® 

Lateral Thinking is for creating ideas and The Six Thinking Hats are for exploring, developing and implementing them.

The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

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Learn how to apply the Six Thinking Hats

"Why have a mind if you can't change it?"

These methods are for you if you are:

Curious and open to learning how to become a better practical thinker, creating useful outcomes

Looking for a structured approach and are willing to practice

Getting stuck in a thinking loop, revisiting the same ideas or issues and wanting to break out

Someone who needs to produce results and needs better alternatives than currently exist

Motivated to explore and develop alternatives

Open to changing your perspective and considering more than one right answer

In your personal life or at work, the purpose of this approach is to enable you to:

 

Create new solutions to stubborn problems

Realise opportunities that were previously neglected

Recognise and change the nature of your own thinking, so you become better at generating and exploring possibilities, not just accepting or defending what already exists

Improve conflict resolution and collaboration

"If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd."

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