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There follows a weekly message from Edward de Bono. The index to the site contents follow after the message.

MESSAGE FOR WEEK BEGINNING 14th April 2008

TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH

There have been so many false claims by Michael Hewitt Gleeson that it is time to tell the truth.

Michael tells how he met me in Melbourne in 1972 and I told him about my work in thinking. Later in 1979 (his date) he asked me if he could set up the Edward de Bono School of Thinking in New York.

Obviously my work already existed otherwise there would have been no point in setting up such a school. So my work in schools pre-dated the setting up of the School of Thinking by many years. Once the School was set up it taught my work exclusively - at least for most of its life.

Michael also claims that he left New York as the result of a legal dispute because, he claims, I had granted the rights in my work both to Pergamon Press and to the School. If I did not possess those rights how could I have granted them to anyone? This was never the basis of the legal problem which resulted in Michael leaving New York. Those legal problems were to do with something quite different. Pergamon had publishing rights on my work. The School had the right to use the material directly in their teaching.

The work mentioned above is the CoRT programme of tools for perceptual thinking such as PMI, CAF, C&S, OPV, etc. This work had been in use in schools many years before the School of Thinking was set up. In no way was this material developed by the School or by Michael. The School of Thinking asked if they could publish a course book with these tools in it. I agreed and the whole book consisted of these tools. Because there were a few pages at the end of the book authored by Michael, and out of courtesy to him, his name was also on the book. This does not in any way make him the originator or owner of these tools. These remain my intellectual property. Any claims by Michael to the contrary are deliberately false and misleading.

My books on lateral thinking were written in the early 1970’s. Again this was years before the School was ever set up. I am not aware that Michael is an expert in lateral thinking – as he claims.

Michael did write a thesis for a correspondence college. This was almost totally based on my work so as his supervisor I could hardly avoid granting him a Ph.D. To the best of my recollection there was very little that was new and original in the book.

SIX THINKING HATS

Michael also claims that he and the School invented the Six Thinking Hats. This is untrue and complete rubbish. Eric Bienstock was in London and came to see me. I told him that I had worked out the concept of the Six Thinking Hats. This was based on my experience in medicine and the way chemicals in the brain sensitise certain circuits according to different moods.

Eric relayed this to Michael and I may indeed have communicated the concept directly to Michael. It was then used in the Readers’ Digest article. Since the Edward de Bono School of Thinking was set up to teach my work I saw no harm in telling them about my latest work.

In no way whatever was the concept designed by Michael or the School of Thinking. Indeed the manuscript of the book was already with the publishers, who have a long lead time before publication of the book in 1985.

I want to state categorically that the Six Thinking Hats was entirely my intellectual property and claims to the contrary are false and rubbish.

I think it sad and unfortunate that anyone who claims thinking ability should base his work on stolen intellectual property. If Michael wants to use my work he should take out a licence, agree to pay royalties and stop making false claims as to the origin of the work.

It may even be that those who have paid money to take Michael’s courses might have a legal claim for a refund if they were led to believe that the material they were being taught had been developed by Michael.

As regards Michael’s book ‘Software for the Mind’, this was actually a title I had suggested to him.

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