About education

Edward de Bono’s Message

Education is all about knowledge and analysis. There is a complete lack of ‘operacy’ and design. Operacy covers the skill of doing and making things happen. Design is putting together what you have to deliver the values you want. Read more

Out of the box!

Edward de Bono’s Message
The brain is designed to allow incoming information to form itself into routine patterns. Without this life would be impossible.

With eleven items of clothing to put on in the morning it would take seventy six years to go through all the ways of getting dressed – spending just one minute on each. Read more

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

Positive News Agency

Edward de Bono’s Message
The media, and especially the press, are usually full of negative news: murders, attacks, economic failures etc. It may be that experience has indeed shown that negative matters are of more interest to readers.

Even if this is so, I believe that at least one page of positive news would be welcomed by readers. Readers would turn to this page – even if they found the negative stuff more interesting. Read more

Difficult Times / Problem Solving

Edward de Bono’s Message
There is a difference between difficult times and a problem. With difficult times the universe of action is changed. All logics are only relevant in their particular universe – just as the universe of a patterning system is different from a language universe.

The recession at the moment qualifies as a difficult time so a rather different thinking is required from traditional problem solving. Values become even more important. Problem solving usually implies a return to the situation before the problem. That is not possible for an individual or a corporation.

Football

Edward de Bono’s Message

I once suggested a change to the rules of soccer. When there is a draw then extra time is played. If there is still a draw there is a penalty shoot-out. This introduces an element of luck. In addition if one side has a player good at penalty shooting then that side would win. Read more

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

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

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