EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
15th December 1996

"Where there is a current 'problem' for creative consideration this can be accessed while it is still current. For example, last week I asked Team members and potential Team members to pin-point faults in democracy.

There are people who like to work on their own. One of the huge advantages of the net is that it allows such people to do exactly that. Someone can interact with the Creative Team entirely on her or his own.

Then there are other people who are happier working with a group. Some people even find it hard to be creative unless they are bouncing ideas off other people even as they are conceiving ideas. I would want such people to consider becoming members of the Creative Team. Such a person could then form a 'sub-team'. Such a sub-team could be a family group, a group of friends, a group specially set up for a once-a-week creative think-in, an existing club, a school etc. Members of such a sub-team will be required to register and subscribe through the Team organiser. It may be that the Team organiser is the only person with active access to the net. This does not matter.

It may even be that the person with access to the net is not an effective organiser. In this case some other person can act as the Organiser of the sub-team, and the person with the net access becomes the Communicator of the group.

I want to make it easy for anyone who is seriously interested in creative thinking to join the Team and to be able to enjoy using his or her creative talents in meeting the challenges put forward by the team.

For example, someone may put the 'democracy' problem to a group of people as a starting point and from this base develop a formal 'sub-team'.

In the future I intend to ask Team members to submit potential problems for creative consideration. I use the word 'problem' only because of general usage. I also mean to include areas which are by no means problems but areas which we feel might benefit from new thinking.

There may be some chronlogical merit in joining the Team at an early stage because where it is not possible to offer benefit to all Team members that benefit may be offered to the first 50, 100 or 1000 members to join. This may prove to be the simplest way of offering an ex-gratia benefit.

Edward de Bono