Edward De Bono on Creative Thinking

May 13th, 2008 by zen

Edward De Bono is a longtime guru in the field of creativity, specializing in horizontal thinking ( De Bono prefers the older terminology he coined, “Lateral Thinking“). Hat tip to David Armano ( on Twitter).

Posted in creativity, Edward De Bono, horizontal thinking, twitter, youtube | 4 comments

Previous post:
Next post:

  1. Dan tdaxp:

    May 13th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Nice video — I love his voice.

    I just read, "Creativity as a Constrained Stochastic Process," by Dean Simontin, in "Creativity: From Potential to Realization" [1].  He makes  similar statements about lateral thinking..  excerpt he refers to it as psychosis! 🙂

  2. zen:

    May 13th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    hi Dan,

    " I love his voice."

    Maltese is reputedly a very difficult and complex language. Polyglot antecedents, I think. Even if De Bono is pure Brit colonial, growing up in Malta would have given his English an affect. He also seems to have an "Oxbridge" overlay in the mix. Very distinctive speech pattern – kind of like William F. Buckley was distinctive.

    That sounds like a good book! Reading it for a 610 edpsych seminar or just self-education?

  3. Seerov:

    May 14th, 2008 at 4:53 am

    I really appreciated when he said "being different for the sake of being different is not creativity."  This concept should be taught in American schools.  Young people seem to think that just because they have green hair and piercings in their face that this makes them creative. Its unfortunate because in reality, they actually epitomize conformity.  American youth culture places a lot of emphasis on being "different."  Unbenounced to them, a group of people who all thrive to be different are actually all the same. 

  4. Justin Boland:

    May 14th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

    I was introduced to "Lateral Thinking" through Alan Moore’s classic comic, Watchmen.
      The example given there was Alexander the Great’s novel solution to the Gordian knot.