Edward de Bono, father of ‘thinking about thinking’, created Adjunct Professor at DCU
Wednesday, 28 September 2005

Dr Ciaran O'hOgartaigh, Prof Ferdinand von Prondznski and Prof Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono has been appointed Adjunct Professor at Dublin City University. To mark this appointment, he gave an inaugural lecture on ‘Serious Creativity and Innovation’ in the Helix which was attended by over 1,000 people.

Professor de Bono said, “I am honoured to be appointed Adjunct Professor at DCU, and I congratulate DCU on their initiative in appreciating that thinking and creativity are important subjects in their own right. Much of our traditional thinking has been concerned with analysis and with recognising standard situations to which we give standard answers. This has served us very well. There are times, however, when we need to design a way forward rather than seek to judge a way forward.”

“For the first time in history we can treat idea creativity on a serious and logical basis. The brain is a self organising information system and such systems create asymmetric patterns. From this basis, it is possible to design the formal and deliberate tools of lateral thinking. These tools can be very powerful. In one instance, a group of workshops working for a steel company produced 21,000 ideas in an afternoon using just one of the tools of lateral thinking.”

Professor de Bono is on the Accenture list of the fifty most influential business thinkers in the world. His renowned methods of lateral and parallel thinking developed revolutionary ways of generating new ideas and concepts. “Parallel thinking”, he said, “is a much better way of exploring a subject than traditional argument. The Six Hats method of parallel thinking is used equally by top economists in Washington and in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The method has been known to cut meeting times to one fifth or less. Teaching thinking at a centre for violent youngsters in London reduced criminality by 90 percent.”

Referring to globalisation and Ireland’s competitive position in the world, Professor de Bono says, “competing with China on the basis of price or quality is no longer an option. Innovation is becoming the most important ingredient in business. The production and delivery of values, and new values, is the game of the future. We no longer need to sit under a tree and wait for an apple to fall on our heads. We can treat creativity much more seriously than that. So I am delighted to have an appointment which allows me to highlight these matters."

Professor de Bono has written 80 books with translations into 42 languages. His methods are taught in thousands of schools around the world and are mandatory on the curriculum in many countries. He is represented in Ireland through the de Bono Foundation.