Edward De Bono New millennium thinker

An 'authority' on creativity. Huh-come again? That Edward de Bono should be regarded as such, and that too by people who often gag at the very notion of 'authority', speaks volumes. Born on Malta in the Mediterranean, this one-time student of medicine and psychology has had thousands of one-hour-thinking bouts gazing at the sky from some island or the other. And the benefits have accrued to thousands who've followed his mind from 'Lateral Thinking' to 'Six Hats' and beyond-the tools he prescribes for deliberate creativity (not an oxymoron, he assures, since there's nothing mystical about it).

The neural networks of the brain are a self-organising information system. The Greeks trained it to think in a well-defined linear pattern (A, B, C...). So? So tweak it, for a change. Go lateral. Perhaps even through random associations. Hear Bono? Think not Edward, but U2. Hear U2? Think not the band, but U-236. Hear U-236? Think nameless streets, strings, obsession, euphoria, lateral inversion, freedom...

Make any sense? Make sense of it, anyhow; new solutions require creativity. "Don't judge the way forward," Bono (Ed) urges, "design it." His motto: "Not 'what is', but 'what can be'." So get provocative. Ask. "Why is democracy defined as a race?" Use any expressive tool. "Language is an encyclopaedia of ignorance." It's inadequate. "We operate on the basis of learning to recognise standard situations and then to supply the standard response," rues Bono.

To break free, try 'thinking mode' diversity. The tool? Six Hats. Get six people to discuss the same issue, but with six different thinking hats to indicate different roles for each. White for unbiased information. Yellow for benefit-think. Black for critical assessment. Red for hot intuition. Green for fresh alternatives. Blue for a calm overview. For the next meeting, switch hats around. And go again.

Impressed? No? "Frames of judgement make a huge difference," says Bono, a self-described 'new millennium thinker', "That is why the assessment of new ideas is so very difficult. Few people have developed value sensitivity enough to assess an idea on its own merits." His cry is for greater sensitivity to value (of the unfamiliar kind). It could change your future. "If you never change your mind," he poses, "why have one?"