Dr Edward de Bono
Edward de Bono is regarded as one of the world's most outstanding thinkers in the field of teaching of constructive and creative thinking as an explicit skill. A best selling author, Dr de Bono has written over 75 books, worked in 45 countries and is referred to as a creative genius. His techniques can change an entire company's or school's performance by teaching children, students and employees to THINK in a more efficient manner. The essence of Dr. de Bono’s work has been to produce thinking techniques that are simple, practical and effective. An example of this is the Six Thinking Hats method, which is now being widely used by major corporations and schools because of its simplicity and power to change thinking behaviour in team and individual performance.
In 2007, Dr de Bono launched The Edward de Bono Foundation UK and in 2008, during the UK Foundation's Creativity & Innovation week opened the Foundation's Centre for Serious Creativity & Constructive Thinking in Crewe.
His books have been translated into 34 languages. These include Lateral Thinking for Management, Six Thinking Hats, Serious Creativity, and Teach Your Child How to Think. He has degrees in medicine, physiology, and psychology. His medical background in biological information systems inspired and enabled him not only to teach thinking but also to design thinking methods. His seminal book "The Mechanism of Mind" (1969) describes his understanding of the mind as a self-organising system, which foms the backdrop to his work. Dr de Bono was a Rhodes scholar and has held faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard.
His methods are now mandatory on the school curriculum in many countries and widely used in others. Over 7.5 million people have used de Bono Thinking Systems in business and education worldwide.
His instruction in thinking has been sought by many organisations; IBM, Prudential, GM, Ford, BT, Boeing, NTT [Japan], NOKIA [Finland], Mondadori [Italy], Total [France], Siemens [Germany], Ericsson [Sweden] and many others.
The appeal of Dr de Bono’s work is its simplicity, practicality and effectiveness. It can be used by anyone from four year olds to senior executives to nobel laureates, people with special needs, the gifted and talented, deprived children and students.
Dr de Bono's work has been recognised and been awarded many accolades. Some of these are listed below.
Dr de Bono was the chairman of the Council of Young Enterprise Europe which has a membership of 1,500,000 youngsters across Europe, Israel and Russia who set up mini-businesses while at school.
In 2005, Edward de Bono was granted membership and Inaugural Chair of the Leonardo da Vinci Socity for the Study of Thinking.
In 2009, Dr de Bono was awarded an honorary degree by Manchester Metropolitan University, amongst many others.
Dr de Bono was an official Ambassador for the European Year of Creativity and Innovation in 2009.
Dr de Bono is regularly ranked among the world's top thinkers. For example, he is number forty on The Times 2007 fifty top thinkers list, where he is described as a "supreme lateral thinker".
There is even a planet named after him, DE73 which became E.de Bono.
Dr de Bono's own website is www.edwarddebono.com.
Buy books by Edward de Bono at the Foundation's Book Shop.