European Year of Creativity & Innovation 2009

Edward de Bono’s Message

There are thousands of people writing software for computers. Yet we have done nothing at all about software for the human mind, for ordinary thinking. We have been content to use the software developed 2,400 years ago by the GG3 (Greek Gang of 3: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle). When this thinking came to Europe at the time of the Renaissance, schools, universities and thinking were all in the hands of the Church. The Church did not need creative thinking. The Church did not need perceptual thinking. What the Church needed was analysis, logic and argument with which to defend the faith and to prove heretics wrong. So this thinking became the core of Western education and remains so to this day. Read more