EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
10th August 1997

"Creativity Conference held in Malta"

Every two years a small and rather special Creativity Conference is held in Malta. The conference is not widely publicised because the venue is small. This year's conference took place a few days ago and was attended by people from twenty different countries as far apart as Peru and Hong Kong. One of the highlights was a talk by Susan Mackie from South Africa on her work with teaching constructive thinking skills to mine workers. This involved working one kilometre below ground level in platinum mines with workers who were illiterate and spoke up to six different languages none of which was English. The results were remarkable. In one case a miner, called Antonio, who was incharge of five games so increased productivity that his bonus increased from araound 200 rand to 1,500 rand. Normally a production target is set for 30 days ahead and rarely reached. In Antonio's case double the set target was achieved in 15 days.

Most people have not the slightest idea of how very powerful simple thinking tools (in this case the CoRT tools) can be. In another instance, in Australia, Jennifer Sullivan took charge of a group of severely unemployed youth. She also taught them the CoRT Tools. They achieved 90 per cent employment which was twice what any other group achieves. And her group were all deaf.

World-wide educators are very far behind in understanding the great power of simple thinking tools. Educators are bogged down in complicated and largely ineffective methods of teaching thinking based on our traditional (gang of three) approach. While this approach has merit it is very deficient in constructive, creative and design thinking. Analysis, judgement and argument have little constructive value. Some time in the future I intend to put over the net simple 'family' thinking lessons.

Next week I intend to announce in this message a very important net conference that I shall be hosting.

Edward de Bono
9th August 1997
Malta