EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
1st June 1997

A 'Lighter' Task.

I am in Toronto where I took part in a satellite seminar that was downloaded to 72 sites across North America. The subject was 'creativity'. Before that I was in Hungary where I had an especially enjoyable time.

The dilemma is that if creativity is made to seem too normal then every organisation believes itself to be creative without further effort. If creative people make themselves too bizarre in order to be different then they become marginalised.

There are layers and layers of misconceptions about creativity. Removing these is very much harder than actually acquiring the skills of creativity.

Now to the promised lighter task.

Take a letter. Add one more letter. Then add another letter. At every stage the letters must form a normal word ( no acronyms, slang or proper names).

Example:
A
AT
CAT
COAT
ACTOR
FACTOR
FACTORY

You may be able to extend the above example even further. Otherwise see if you can beat the seven stages illustrated with an example of your own. (This exercise will be ongoing and submissions will be published from time to time - see Creative Team "Word Extensions")

The procedure is not a bad example of creativity. With new information, experience and technology we may need to go back and re-structure what we had in order to make full use of what has just arrived.

I shall return to the profession design when I have the chance to assess these fully.

My next stop is an international thinking conference in Singapore. This is the seventh such conference and 2000 registrants are expected. It was all started many years ago by Bill Maxwell who was teaching my CoRT schools programme in Fiji.

Edward de Bono
30th May 1997