Edward De Bono's Smart Thinking/Cassette
by Edward De Bono, Audio Renaissance; 1994, ISBN: 1559272392

I think that Edward De Bono is both an important thinker and writer of our generation.  I have owned at least ten of his books and can actually claim to have read half of them.  Most of his prolific writing is accessible and I would encourage anyone to read at least one of his books.  "Lateral Thinking "is probably his best known contribution to creative thinking but "Six Thinking Hats" has been perhaps the most "marketable"  This cassette is a great introduction to De Bono and I also think that uses of multi-media is important in learning.  In other words, we shouldn't limit ourselves to the printed word. 

 I had the good fortune or misfortune depending on your view on not only hearing De Bono speak but actually meeting him twenty years ago.  He was rather pompous and arrogant then so it can as no surprise to get the same impression from his tape.  This perception does not seem to come across as strongly in his written form. That in mind, I thought that one of the reviews from the amazon.com site really summarized this book better than I could.  I agree with the writer completely, but think the book is still a worthwhile purchase.

This has its pluses-- a broad survey of DeBono's ideas and tips for improving your thinking methods. DeBono's ideas are excellent and clear, and the 32 page booklet covers them well. So far so good.

What's so irritating about the cassette is that DeBono spends a large percentage of the time tooting his own horn, and making insinuations about other people stealing his ideas. He suggests that the invention of automatic suspension in cars may have been ripped off from an example in an older DeBono book. He spends 5 minutes implying that he deserves partial credit for making the Olympics profitable, because the guy who did, once saw a DeBono presentation. And he whines that random word techniques are suggested by many other authors on creativity, often without giving proper DeBono credit. (And this last isn't exactly a novel idea; the Dadaists probably did it.)

While any of these accusations may be true, who cares? This kind of stuff just shouldn't be on a 1 hour survey course. It is distracting, it is not useful for learning the concepts, and it wastes a large percentage of the hour. I got this as a refresher (I read many of DeBono's books about 12 years ago), but I keep popping it out of the player because I can't stand the attitude.

In short, DeBono's ideas and methods are very much worth learning, and have been a great help to me. But I hope there's a better introduction to them than this cassette.

RFH (00/10)

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