Think! by Edward de Bono

intellectual culture and education was determined by the Church in the Middle Ages and argument was what the Church needed to prove heretics wrong.
    Parallel thinking
    Imagine a rather ornate building of a square shape. There are four people, each of whom is facing one aspect of this building. Through a mobile phone or walkie-talkie, each person is insisting and arguing that he or she is facing the most beautiful aspect of the building.
    Parallel thinking means that they change how they go about this argument. All four people move around to the south side of the building together. Then all of them move on to the west side. Then the north and finally the east side. So all of them, in parallel, are looking at the same side of the building at any one moment.
    Instead of argument, where A is adversarially attacking B, we have a system where A and B are both looking and thinking in the same direction – but the directions change as they move around. That is parallel thinking.
    In our lives we need a symbol to indicate the direction of thinking at any one moment to ensure we are thinking in the same direction.
    A zebra is grazing and hears a rustle in the grass. A chemical is released in the brain, which sensitises all the circuits concerned with danger. As soon as the lion appears, the zebra is prepared to flee. The reverse happens in the lion's brain. As soon as the lion sees the zebra, the chemicals alert the lion's brain to positive action.
    For such reasons we need to separate out the modes of thinking because there is confusion if we try and do everything at once. We end up just operating in a negative mode.
    The purpose of the Six Hats is to separate the modes of thinking and to ensure that everyone is thinking in parallel in the same mode at any one moment. We use the symbol of the Thinking Hat.
    The Six Thinking Hats
    I designed this method in 1984. It is now very widely used by four-year-olds in school and by top executives in the world's largest corporations.
ABB in Finland used to take 30 days for their multinational project discussions. Using the Six Hats, they do it in two days.
Siemens told me they had reduced their product development time by 50 per cent through using the Six Hats.
Someone at IBM told me that at their top laboratory, meeting times had been reduced to one-quarter of their original duration.
J.P. Morgan in Europe reduced meeting times to one tenth.
When the Boxing Day tsunami hit Sri Lanka in 2004, the various aid agencies seemed unable to plan a way forward. The Sri Lankan government invited my trainer, Peter Low, over from Singapore. In two days they had agreed a plan of action. The Sri Lankan government now insists that all aid agencies learn the Six Hats method.
Grant Todd in the USA did research on the use of the Six Hats in jury discussions. Juries reached unanimous decisions very rapidly. Judges were so impressed that in some states the judge can recommend that the jury learn the system. This may be the first change in the jury system for over 1,000 years.
MDC in Canada did a careful costing and found that they saved $20 million in the first year of using the Six Hats.
Statoil in Norway had a problem with an oil rig that was costing them $100,000 a day until they fixed it. They had been thinking about it for some time. Then Jens Arup, one of my trainers, introduced the Six Hats. In 12 minutes they had solved the problem and saved $10 million.
    The hats
    There is no fixed order of use. You can choose the sequence you want. In training, some of the more useful sequences will be suggested.
    Blue Hat: This is the organising or control hat. It is rather like the conductor of an orchestra. It is used right at the beginning of a discussion to decide the focus and what sequence of hats to use. During the meeting the chairperson or facilitator metaphorically wears the Blue Hat in a disciplinary way. People are reminded of the hat in use if they stray from that mode. The Blue Hat is used at

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