Perception

Edward de Bono’s Message

It is not possible to pay attention to everything at once. In a market there are different stalls so that you need only pay attention to one thing – once you have chosen that thing. Read more

“I wish the telephone had never been invented”…

Edward de Bono wishes the telephone had never been invented and would love to have been born in the 15th century.

In this article from The Telegraph Edward de Bono talks about his fantasy job, sporting heroes and he would like to be remembered.

Click here for the full story.

Dear Mr Darling…

I was sent this email today. It’s the best solution to the recession I’ve seen…

Dear Mr. Darling,

Please find below some suggestions for fixing Britain’s economy.  Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.  You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force.  - Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations: Read more

Innovation – Too Risky?

 

There has never been a time when innovation has been more important.  It might be about finding new ways to cut costs or new product opportunities or generating a competitive edge.

Doing something new inevitably involves risk.  The problem is that in difficult times people actually want to feel secure.  The sales of food in the current environment indicate that people are going back to the brands that they know and trust.   Read more

How creative are you?

Apparently, I am 54% creative. By answering 10 questions on  this quiz it worked out that:

“You are a quite creative person. You’re always involved in at least on interesting project. Keep it up and keep learning. Your creativity may bring you great things someday.”

These types of quiz’s are a bit of fun but like most of the writing about creativity it misses the point. I could be ‘99% creative’ or ‘10% creative’ – it doesn’t matter, it is irrelevant and I’d be very suprised if this quiz has been validated. Read more

Do schools kill creativity?

If you haven’t seen Sir Ken Robinson speak, watch this video to whet your appetite.  He often speaks at the London Business Forum in London and is one of the best speakers on creativity I have seen.  Sir Ken mirrors Dr de Bono’s views on thinking in education.

Thinking ourselves out of a recession

 

One of the big problems with a recession is the ‘doom and gloom’ talk brought on by the media’s persistent need to link every news story to the downturn. 

One of my favourites recently was how David Beckham was ‘feeling the effects of the credit crunch’ because his Gillette endorsement contract hadn’t been renewed. It had nothing to do with the downturn, his contract wasn’t renewed – like many celebrities every year.   Read more

Setting up an “Ideas Management System”

To be truly creative the mind needs to be stretched to beyond its normal conventional thinking. Lateral Thinking techniques are particularly effective at shifting ones perception of what is possible. It is from within a large number of ideas that the real value is found.

Read more

How to Increase Creativity across a Traditional Thinking Organisation

Often organisations don’t understand what innovation is.  Things like process improvements, cost cutting and change management do not seem very ‘innovative’ but actually are the changes that lead to innovation.

Simplifying a process can be as innovative as creating a whole new one so moving a traditional thinking organisation to an innovative thinking organisation is not as hard as it seems.

Read more

Leaders in London

We were asked to support Edward de Bono as he was invited to speak at the Leaders in London main conference. He also held a Masterclass for over 200 eager delegates. 

The line-up was a mixture of household names (Al Gore, Kofi Annan, David Cameron etc) and business keynote speakers (Allan Leighton, Banjamin Zander, Marcus Buckingham). What surprised me the most was the quality of each and every speaker. 

At most conferences you get a range of quality but this really was special. I should point out that I’m not being paid to say this! If you want some free snippets of last years speakers go here.

I am attending again this year and thoroughly recommend the conference.

« Previous Page — Next Page »