Inventor of Lateral Thinking
Born in Floriana, Edward was the son of Joseph Edward* and Josephine Mary née Burns*. He is regarded as the leading international authority in the field of conceptual thinking and also the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. He originated the concept of ‘lateral thinking’, which is now officially recognised in the Oxford English Dictionary.
He studied at St Edward’s College and the UM where he graduated in science (1953) and medicine (1956). As a Rhodes scholar, he obtained an honours degree in psychology and physiology MA (1961) and a D.Phil in medicine (1961) at Christ Church, Oxford. He also holds a Ph.D (1963) from Cambridge.
De Bono has held appointments at the universities of Oxford, London, Cambridge, and Harvard. He is one of the very few people who can be said to have had a major impact on the way we think. In many ways he can be said to be the best known thinker internationally.
De Bono has written 85 books with translations into 38 languages (all the major languages plus Hebrew, Arabic, Bahasa, Urdu, Slovenian, Turkish, etc). He has lectured in 52 countries. At the University of Buenos Aires five faculties use his books as required reading. In Venezuela, by law, all school children must spend an hour a week on his programmes. In Singapore 102 secondary schools use his work. In Malaysia the senior science schools have been using his techniques for ten years. In the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK, thousands of schools are using De Bono’s programmes to teach thinking.
At the International Thinking Meeting in Boston (1992), he was given an award as a key pioneer in the direct teaching of thinking in schools. In 1988 De Bono was awarded the first Capire prize in Madrid for a significant contribution to human kind. At the special request of the delegates, De Bono addressed the Commonwealth Law Conference in Vancouver in August 1996 (there were 2,300 senior lawyers, judges, etc. from 52 Commonwealth countries and other invited countries).
De Bono has worked with many of the major corporations, such as IBM, Du Pont, Prudential, AT&T, British Airways, British Coal, NTT (Japan), Ericsson (Sweden), and Total (France). Europe’s largest corporation, Siemens (370,000 employees), is teaching his work across the whole corporation, following de Bono’s talk to the senior management team. When Microsoft held their first-ever marketing meeting, they invited De Bono to give the keynote address in Seattle to 500 top managers.
De Bono’s special contribution has been to put the mystical subject of creativity on a solid basis. He has shown that creativity is a necessary behaviour in a self-organising information system. His key book, The Mechanism of Mind (1969), shows how the nerve networks in the brain formed asymmetric patterns as the basis of perception. From this basis, he developed the concept and tools of lateral thinking. What is so special is that he has made his work practical and available to everyone, from five-year-olds to adults.
Lord Mountbatten once invited De Bono to talk to all his admirals. He also opened the first-ever Pentagon meeting on creativity, while he addressed the banking and finance group at the UN Social Summit in Copenhagen. The term ‘lateral thinking’, introduced by De Bono, is now part of the language.
In 1972 De Bono established the Cognitive Research Trust as a charitable organisation to teach thinking in schools and founded the International Creative Forum which has had as members many of the leading corporations: IBM, Du Pont, Prudential, Nestle, British Airways, Alcoa, CSR, etc. His International Creativity Office in New York also works with the UN and member countries to produce new ideas on international issues.
In 1994 Malta awarded De Bono the Order of Merit, its highest award available and limited to 20 living persons. For many millions of people world-wide, De Bono’s name has become a symbol of creativity and new thinking.
In 1996 the members of the European Creativity Association declared De Bono as the person who had influenced them most. His name came so far ahead that they requested the official naming committee of the International Astronomical Union (in Massachusetts) to name a planet after him: DE73 became EdeBono.
De Bono has made two TV series: De Bono’s Course in Thinking (BBC) and The Greatest Thinkers (WDR, Germany). In 1997 De Bono was invited to provide the ‘new thinking’ element as one of the major speakers at the first ecology conference in Beijing.
In 1993 in Malta the Edward De Bono Foundation was set up while in 2002, the UM founded the Edward De Bono Institute for the Design and Development of Thinking.
In June 2004 at Villa Bighi in Kalkara, on the initiative of Edward De Bono and the Edward De Bono Foundation (Malta), the World Centre for New Thinking was inaugurated. In May 2008, this centre organised the First World Congress in New Thinking.
In October 2008, the world-renowned author on creative thinking proposed the setting of a Palace of Thinking in Malta, a building where ideas would be generated.
Considered as the father of lateral thinking, in December 2008, De Bono was appointed one of the 23 ambassadors for the European Year for Innovation and Creativity which was celebrated in 2009.
In June 2018, Edward DeBono was chosen as the first ‘achiever of excellence’ for Edward Lowell’s promotional campaign entitled ‘Someday…everything will make perfect sense’.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.