1. BOOK REVIEW
Edward de Bono (2009, 2010). Think! Before It’s Too Late (London: Vermilion
Books).
INTRODUCTION
What does it mean to think? What does it mean to teach thinking? How different
are these activities compared to the traditional approaches in psychology or
philosophy? How can lateral thinking make us better thinkers? These are a few
of the questions that De Bono addresses in this book. While many readers would
have at least heard of ‘lateral thinking,’ De Bono’s work is not reducible to only
lateral thinking. As this book makes obvious, De Bono is interested in anything
that will help to teach us to think effectively. While De Bono is not critical of the
traditional approaches to thinking, he feels that it is time to ‘supplement’ what is
available in psychology and philosophy, or more broadly put the pedagogical
approach to rationality, with a new set of approaches that are easy to teach in
educational institutions and in workshops for executives and managers. De
Bono, incidentally, is a professor of thinking rather than of any particular
discipline though he has done his share of research and has taught in a number
of prestigious universities. The aim of this book is to not only summarize the
cognitive techniques that he has developed over a number of years, but to forge
new pedagogical techniques and make them available to anybody wants to think
more effectively. It will, needless to say, be of use to those who are working in
1

2. management theory and business studies since the analytic approaches to
problem solving in place needs to extend the range of cognitive tools and mind-
sets that are available to solve the problems of the present and the future. De
Bono has included a number of examples from around the world on the results
obtained by the creative approaches to problem solving that he has popularized
through his workshops.
MECHANISMS OF MIND
De Bono is basically interested in working out the basic ‘mechanisms of mind’
and in thinking through its implications for a theory of learning and problem
solving. He argues that the human mind is mainly characterized by ‘asymmetric
patterns’ and unless we understand what these patterns are, we will not be able
to design learning programs that can take advantage of the neuronal patterns
that actually exist in the mind. He therefore believes that it is necessary to
introduce creative approaches to problem solving in addition to the analytic
approaches that we are more familiar with in the curriculum. The main source of
misunderstanding is related to the fact that the connotations of the term
‘creative’ are understood mainly in the context of the arts, but what he has in
mind also includes ideational forms of creativity. But, at the same time, he is not
attempting to convert the members of his workshop into creative geniuses. What
2

3. he is trying to do instead is to make a range of cognitive tools and forms of
thinking available so that the participants in his workshops can add more value
wherever they happen to find themselves in the context of the theory and
practice of management. De Bono defines his task as the attempt to formalize
‘self-organizing systems’ that work with ‘asymmetric patterns.’ In order to
appreciate what he is up to in his books and workshops, we need to understand
what these technical terms mean in his theory of thinking.
SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS
A pattern is defined here as a sequential ‘path’ in terms of the probability
involved in moving in a particular direction. This is analogous to the movement
of brain states from a particular thought to the thought that appears next in a
given sequence. The brain itself then is an instance of a self-organizing system; it
works with pattern recognition rather than ponder on the number of
combinatorial possibilities for any piece of human action. These ingrained
patterns then help us to save time; this is akin to doing most things in everyday
life on ‘auto-pilot’. Any new information that is used as an input to the thought
process is then internalized along the pathways that are already in place in the
mind since that is more economical from the point of view of a self-organizing
system. De Bono compares this process of cognitive path dependence to the
formation of streams, and the shaping of these streams subsequently into rivers
due to rainfall. Once these streams and rivers are in place, they are like conduits
3

4. to channel water from any subsequent increase in rainfall. These are simple
instances of self-organizing systems.
ASYMMETRIC PATTERNS
They are referred to as self-organizing because nobody sat down to design
streams or rivers or even thought-patterns, but they occur regularly in nature
and in the human mind. Given that such patterns should exist, why are they
asymmetric? And, what furthermore, are the implications of such asymmetric
patterns to a theory of mind and cognition? The main implication here is that if
we understand the role of asymmetric patterns in self-organizing systems, we
can teach thinking to a large number of people without falling for the argument
that creative thinking must be restricted to a select few. Creative leaps in
thinking exploit this pattern of asymmetry without a conscious awareness of
what is going on though in retrospect the new insight seems logical. These
asymmetric leaps, incidentally, are what link a theory of creativity to a theory of
humor. So understanding the structure of humor is a way of generating insights
into the structure of creativity. De Bono gives the instance of a person who
complained seriously to the station master that there were two clocks in the
station but they did not show the same time. The station master however
nonchalantly replied that there was no point in having two clocks if both were to
show the same time. While this is meant to be a joke, it also makes a serious
point. Why, after all, should two clocks show the same time? The unexpected
4

5. reversal in the meaning of this sentence is a simple instance of an asymmetric
pattern.
JUDGMENT & DESIGN
The main contention in De Bono’s work is that the constraints in the thought
process are linked to the philosophical legacy of ancient Greek thought which
valorized logic and argumentation as the main set of cognitive modes in learned
discussions. While these approaches are necessary, they are not sufficient.
Furthermore, the wide-spread misunderstanding of what the term ‘creative’
means has led to a situation where thinking is not conceived of as an
independent discipline, which can help just about anybody who wants to add
value to a problem solving situation but gets lost in psychological or
philosophical approaches to problem solving. So the new category that De Bono
introduces to the problem of critical judgment that is taught in courses in logic is
the notion of ‘design’. Here, again, the term ‘design’ is often misunderstood. De
Bono’s definition of the relationship between the notion of critical judgment and
creative design is this. ‘Design is putting together what we have in order to
deliver the values we want. Judgment seeks the truth and makes decisions based
on the past. Design seeks value and designs for the future’. So what we need
then is to supplement the main process of judgment with the notion of design.
This is especially the case in situations where the ‘standard routine’ is not
5

6. enough. What we need to do then is to increase the ambit of possibilities in
thinking through problems.
CONTEXTS OF DISCOVERY & JUSTIFICATION
In the philosophy of science, for instance, this is done by differentiating between
the ‘context of discovery’ and the ‘context of justification.’ The protocols of
scientific method are necessary but not sufficient since insights often emerge as
asymmetric patterns which are justified retroactively rather than anticipated as an
event within the ‘logic of scientific discovery’ The skepticism that is evinced in
multiplying creative approaches to problem solving using the model of
asymmetric leaps then has nothing to do with theories of cognition per se, but
with the Church’s preoccupation with ‘heresy’ in medieval Europe. This is why
scientific works during this period were often prefaced by a statement that they
were mathematical speculations rather than empirical descriptions of how the
world is actually made. Once this theoretical concession was made by a scientist,
the danger of heresy was removed and the work could be published. So while
this arrangement was a way of preventing conflict between the scientific
community and the medieval Church, it settled down in course of time into a
habit of mind that is not relevant in a secular era where the explanatory primacy
of science is usually not questioned. These residual thought patterns however
continue to serve as forms of intellectual inhibition in the process of problem
solving.
6

7. THINKING WITH SIX HATS
Lateral thinking and the many new forms of cognitive models that De Bono has
developed are ways of thinking past these usual obstacles. The term that De
Bono uses in this context is ‘creative possibilities.’ These frameworks are
alternatives to disputes which can find fault with problem solving modes
without being able to suggest new options. The ‘six thinking hats’ method for
instance where different colors symbolize different aspects of a problem is a way
of getting members of a team or a committee or an elected assembly to map their
way through a set of arguments without identifying completely with any
particular hat. When members take turns wearing these hats they are more likely
to see what the levels of over-determination are in the context of a given problem
solving situation. This method curbs the possibility that any given member will
try to show-off his intellectual superiority by engaging in a forensic (rather than
in a collaborative) manner. While this method may not be so entertaining for
onlookers, it is more likely to lead to constructive problem solving.
SIX TYPES OF VALUES
Why did it take so long (2400 hundred years) to develop a simple approach like
the six hats method? The answer is that we want the heady excitement of
arguments as an end in itself rather than as a means to problem solving. De Bono
7

8. also invokes the need to award six different types of medals to represent
different forms of values.
These medals will be made of the following materials and symbolize different
things: the materials are gold, silver, steel, glass, wood, and brass. The values
that they represent include the following respectively: human values,
organizational values, quality, innovation, ecological value, and perceptual
values. The advantage of a design approach over a mere argumentative
approach is that it will force us to be honest about the values that we are trying
to deliver in the context of education. As should be obvious, a combination of
these is what is actually present in organizations albeit to varying proportions
irrespective of what set of values we think we are putting forth.
TOOLS FOR THINKING
What should we do now? De Bono argues that there are three things that
demand our attention. They are related to the problem of ‘attitude’, ‘perceptual
tools,’ and ‘perceptual maps’. What attitude means is that we must move from a
preoccupation with problem solving to creating new possibilities by generating
new options. While we must continue to make and learn to make sound
judgments, we must also learn to move forward from there to find alternatives
for the future. Learning to make new use of perceptual tools means that we must
8

9. recognize and situate the dominant set of perceptions in any given situation, and
then, learn to perceive differently. Some of the basic perceptual tools that De
Bono has developed to learn to perceive things differently without being limited
by the default programs in place include the following: Plus, Minus, and
Interesting (PMI), Considering All Factors (CAF), Consequences and Sequels
(C&S), Aims, Goals, and Objectives (AGO), First Important Priorities (FIP),
Alternatives, Possibilities, and Choices (APC), etc. These are simple tools with
which people of all ages can be taught to think.
CONCLUSION
So this sense of not knowing how to think about a problem or always thinking
along the lines of the default program is a severe limitation to generating
options. These cognitive templates like those used in case analysis are useful in a
varied set of contexts and not all of them will be useful to all professionals. But
they are self-explanatory and will yield interesting new ways of thinking
through problems. Just as there are many new perceptual tools, there are
perceptual maps as well. So, for instance, De Bono has a notion of flowscape
which is about observing the sequence in which thoughts flow in the mind
without invoking the notion of cause-and-effect in a hurry, but to merely list the
important terms that emerge. Once these terms are put down in writing, the
person who is watching his own flowscape should ask which items in the list
match which items. The relationship between these columns will help the
9

10. individual understand the differences amongst the notion of logic and the notion
of possibility. These forms of flowscape can help an individual to understand
how perceptions mediate the process of cognition.
These cognitive tools then are applied to a varying set of social and
organizational contexts to see what alternative solutions are possible without
merely repeating the default program. De Bono wraps up this volume with a list
of programs that are available and which can be used in educational institutions
throughout the world. Merely urging people to think, as De Bono knows, will
not solve the problem. What is needed in the context of organizations is not only
the ‘right to think,’ but ‘instructions’ on the forms of thinking, and the
‘permission to think’ using the cognitive templates that De Bono has popularized
through his work on thinking with six hats.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
10