I’ve always like DeBono’s ideas, esp. how he tries to look a bit deeper at clichés like “thinking outside the box”, and his criticism with some of the other middlebrow creativity techniques. He’s later books (in particular, “Think!”) are a bit too much self-promoting to me, and linking his methods to all kinds of real-world successes where it is not at all clear what the role of of said method really was.
It’d be great to have some real experiments (with control groups etc.) to see how well these methods really work.
I won’t wait for those though, and use the parts that have been helpful to me in the past; I especially like his reminders that to find a solution one should always focus on what it should do, and not how. E.g., the problem is not really “I need a towel”, the problem is “I need something to dry myself”.
I’ve always like DeBono’s ideas, esp. how he tries to look a bit deeper at clichés like “thinking outside the box”, and his criticism with some of the other middlebrow creativity techniques. He’s later books (in particular, “Think!”) are a bit too much self-promoting to me, and linking his methods to all kinds of real-world successes where it is not at all clear what the role of of said method really was.
It’d be great to have some real experiments (with control groups etc.) to see how well these methods really work.
I won’t wait for those though, and use the parts that have been helpful to me in the past; I especially like his reminders that to find a solution one should always focus on what it should do, and not how. E.g., the problem is not really “I need a towel”, the problem is “I need something to dry myself”.