An interview with Edward De Bono, is there a way to train creativity as it was a muscle?

Is there a way to train creativity, as if it was a muscle?

We can train creativity like we can train mathematics or learning French, and like any other skill, some people will be better than other, like in tennis or skiing or cooking. The background is, the way I see it, that the most important problem facing humanity is not climate change, but the poor quality of our thinking, and what is surprising is that anyone is saying that. Our thinking is not as good as we believe it is.

Has our thinking become mediocre or maybe is that it was originally ill designed?

What happens with our thinking, with the software of our thinking, is that it was originally designed 2400 years ago by the Greek gang of 3 (Aristotle, Plato, Socrates) when they came into Europe. Until the renaissance, people running schools, universities, thinking, were church people: they did not need perceptual thinking, they did not need design thinking, they did not need creative thinking, what they needed is just truth, logic and argument to prove heretics' wrong, and that has become the core of our thinking. We have a good thinking to find the truth but we have never developed the thinking for creating value.

Do you think of any current conflict that could have been solved using creative manners?

For instance, in the recent Israel-Gaza problem, what I would do is that the countries supported the Palestinians with a grant of 3 billion dollars and the Israelis were supported by the US with 4 billion dollars. But every time they fire a rocket, they lose 50 million. Now you pay differently. Design is the keyword, not judgement. The world needs new possibilities, new ideas, new alternatives. Many years ago I tried to set up a group in the UN to provide some new thinking. That proved to be impossible: they said that we were not there to think, but to represent our countries.

What is that project of Palace of Thinking about?

There's no place for new ideas. If a big country like the US said we have no ideas people would say "no, that's part of your policy" so there's a need for a... not a major part, to set up a platform for thinking: one of the big projects I have is to set up a Palace of Thinking. It would have periodic, creative meetings on world problems that will provide new ideas from everyone, maybe could be in Spain, and countries would be invited, not to send representatives but to send thinkers.

Is lateral thinking needed in circumstances such as the current economic crisis?

There are two levels: one is the level of individual organizations, that in the crisis you need different thinking than normal, the other is: solutions to the crisis or preventing it coming again. I have a web site (www.debonopost.com) in which I offer solutions to the crisis. So, the answer is yes.

And how could lateral thinking prevent the excessive alarm caused in the population by the media, for instance, as what happened with the swine flu?

It's a difficult one because without some alarm people don't do anything, but at the same time too much alarm becomes panic, and the media like alarm.

You released the Edward de Bono Code Book to solve the imperfections of language, in which, for example, de Bono code 6/2 meant "Give me my point of view and I will give you your point of view". Don't you trust conventional language anymore?

Well, language is very inadequate to describe complex situations, language is based on history going back and back, so we need a better way of describing complex situations and this is also on the web (www.debonocode.org). And there's a need for it, and I think it will be useful in the future. You might be having a negotiation and you want to say to everyone "we are not going to get anywhere unless you give up and unfix positions". We need to put it in a way that that everyone understands, so we need to take the language to a higher level.

Why is so hard in international politics to reach formal agreements on basic affairs, such as education, hunger or poverty?

One of the really basic forms of politics is that certain professions find it very hard to go into politics: architects, engineers, scientists, physicists... because if they do not deliver a great speech, they can't go back to the tribune. So what happens? Politics is full of talking people: lawyers, teachers, journalists, trade unionists. None of whom have the habit of constructing thinking, that's a huge problem worldwide.

Is investing in Research and development the easiest way to escape the crisis?

R+d is needed not just because of the crisis, because countries like India and China, with very low cost they can do anything that is done in the West, so the ideas researched can perhaps provide some being, but China can catch up on that. The Chinese government is teaching my work in school in five provinces as a pilot project, for example. So if China starts thinking, the rest of the world can be a tourist area for the Chinese.

Which of the quotes you have claimed in your career, which are spread in the media, internet, etc, has been, in your opinion, most influential?

I think the one which I always repeat: "You can analyze the past, but you have to design the future". We don't do that.

14 / 05 / 2009