Overview

Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono (19 May 1933 – 10 June 2021) was a Maltese physician, psychologist, philosopher, and author. He held faculty appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard. He coined the term lateral thinking in 1967 and spent his career developing practical tools for thinking — most famously the Six Thinking Hats framework (1985).

De Bono's work is philosophically distinct from the academic cognitive style tradition. He was not primarily interested in measuring how people think — he was interested in teaching people to think differently. His frameworks are prescriptive and pedagogical, not descriptive and psychometric.

"De Bono is more interested in the usefulness of developing ideas than proving the reliability or efficacy of his approach." — Frameworks For Thinking (Cambridge evaluation of 42 thinking frameworks)

Part 1: Lateral Thinking

What It Is

De Bono coined the term lateral thinking in his 1967 book The Use of Lateral Thinking (described by The Sunday Times as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II).

The key insight: the mind is a pattern-recognition and pattern-following system. When you encounter a problem, your brain rapidly retrieves the most familiar, most practiced framework for dealing with it and routes thinking along that pathway. This is efficient. It is also limiting — because the most familiar pathway is not always the most productive one.

Vertical thinking (de Bono's term for conventional logical reasoning) digs deeper in the same place. It is rigorous, analytical, sequential. It follows existing patterns to their logical conclusions.

Lateral thinking moves sideways across mental patterns. It is not the opposite of logical thinking — it is a complement to it. It changes the frame rather than working within the frame.

De Bono's famous image: imagine someone digging a hole. Vertical thinking digs the hole deeper. Lateral thinking asks: am I digging in the right place? Should I be digging at all?

Core Principles of Lateral Thinking

1. Recognition of dominant patterns — Most thinking is pattern-following. The first step is recognizing when you're doing it.
2. Challenging of assumptions — Every problem statement contains embedded assumptions. Lateral thinking systematically surfaces and challenges them.
3. Search for alternatives — Even when you have a good solution, lateral thinking asks: what are the other possibilities?
4. Use of random stimulation — Deliberately introducing an unrelated concept to disrupt established thought patterns and generate new connections.
5. Movement rather than judgment — Lateral thinking suspends judgment during idea generation. An idea doesn't need to be good to be useful as a stepping stone to a good idea.

Lateral Thinking vs. Creativity

De Bono insisted that lateral thinking is not the same as creativity, though they overlap. Creativity often involves a final product or insight. Lateral thinking is a process — a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting established thought patterns. You can be systematic about lateral thinking in a way you can't be purely systematic about creativity.