Edward de Bono's weekly message: Rush to Design

In conflict situations we rush to judgement. In courts of law we rush to judgement. We never seek to design a way forward.

Design is putting together what you have in order to deliver the value you want.

Design is every bit as important in real life as analysis, yet design is nowhere in education outside graphic design, etc.

Design should be a key part of education from the youngest age upwards. I used to run a design competition for youngsters. The range of concepts used by them was very impressive. One day I should write a book ‘Design for education’ to be used in all classes.

Learn Blue Ocean Strategy in London

The Blue Ocean Strategy Simulation, October 13-14 in London, will teach you the principles, methodologies, and tools of the bestselling strategy book.

In a rich, interactive simulation, teams will manage a company facing vicious competition in a declining industry. Using Blue Ocean thinking, you will re-define the industry, launch innovative new products, and learn to make the competition irrelevant.

Learn to apply Blue Ocean thinking to your own business. Get more info and register online for the Blue Ocean Strategy Simulation.

Is Google Losing Its Vaunted Culture of Innovation?

Google is frequently lauded as amongst the most creative companies in the world. This week's Economist describes how Google, like every large organization, has struggled to retain its culture of innovation during its exponential growth from a startup to a hegemon.

Scenius

Kevin Kelly has a nice overview of Brian Eno's concept of "scenius", or collaborative genius. I imagine that Dr. de Bono would approve of Eno's pithy turn of phrase. He would certainly agree with Eno's observation that collaboration enhances innovation. The best new ideas come from groups of individuals who interact and respond to each other, rather than from a solitary genius working in isolation.

Women - Small and Mid-Sized Businesses - Multimedia

Edward de Bono will open next month's "Women - Small and Mid-Sized Businesses - Multimedia" conference in Warsaw, Poland.

The conference's goal is "to present to the SMB sector, especially to women managing their own companies the ways of introducing new (creative) solutions for organisation, management, offered services or products or for the applied technologies, to show methods for project team-building and for applying lateral thinking." The conference is part of the EU's Year of Creativity and Innovation program.

Edward de Bono's weekly message: Design in the curriculum!

Schools are all about knowledge and analysis. So are universities. Most human thinking is based on analysis which allows us to identify standard situations and then we can apply the standard behaviour or solution. This is like a doctor in a clinic diagnosing the disease and then prescribing the standard treatment.

This behaviour is excellent and most useful. But it is ebne. Design is equally important. Yet design does not figure on the curriculum in schools and universities.

I used to run a design competition in an education magazine. There was a very good response even from youngsters as young as four years old.

Edward de Bono
5th August 2009

Edward de Bono's weekly message: New book

My latest book (published July 2nd) is called 'THINK: before it is too late'. In it I suggest that the biggest problem facing humanity is not climate change but inadequate thinking. We are very complacent and even proud of our thinking. We can land men on the moon. WE can tap atomic energy. We have the internet, WE have supersonic flight etc. We have done very well in the area of science and technology because we have developed 'thinking for finding the truth'.

I have suggested the new word 'ebne' which means excellent but not enough. Our existing thinking is ebne but not enough. We have never developed 'thinking for creating value'.

In conflicts we rush to judge who is wrong and seek to punish that party. We do not try to design a way forward.

Edward de Bono
20th July 2009

Coke Freestyle

Coca-Cola is rolling out what looks to be a groundbreaking new drinks dispenser: Coke Freestyle. Your standard fountain machine at any fast-food joint has six or eight different types of fizzy drinks - Coke, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Sprite, etc. Instead of trifling 6-8 options, the Coke Freestyle machines will give consumers more than a hundred flavors.

At first blush, this might seem like a new version of the cable TV problem: "Five hundred channels and nothing on." But Coke Freestyle is actually a terrifically innovative development.

First, it offers huge scope for new product development. It is expensive and time-consuming to develop new drinks, pilot them in various test markets, and (maybe) roll them out nationally. Freestyle bypasses this entire process, allowing Coca-Cola to test hundreds - even thousands - of new products simultaneously. The cost of a new drink is minimal - just slap a different bag of syrup in the machine, update the machine's software with the new recipe, and that's it. And because each machine via the Internet to Coca-Cola's IT systems, the results of these experiments are available to managers in real-time.

Second, Freestyle enables regional differentiation. Maybe Peach Coke will be popular in Georgia but a flop everywhere else. Similarly, whilst the nation as a whole might shun Java Coke, it could be a huge hit with Seattlites.

Third, Coca-Cola can observe how tastes change throughout the day. For example, Freestyle has led Coke's managers to discover a surprising, mid-afternoon increase in sales of caffeine-free and sugar-free drinks. This valuable insight will drive some of their marketing decisions, enabling them to better target consumers in the post-lunch lull.

Finally, Coke Freestyle facilitates better inventory management. The dispensers monitor their own inventory levels, signalling store managers when a bag of syrup starts to run dry. In other words, Coca-Cola is applying the just-in-time management philosophy to its drinks machines, which allows the company to tie up less capital.

In short, the new dispenser is a huge advance for the fizzy drinks industry.

Edward de Bono's New Book

Edward de Bono's latest book is now available: Think! Before It's Too Late: 23 Reasons Why World Thinking Is So Poor.

At present, it's available only in the UK. So far, there's no word on a US release.

Innovation in Public Transportation

Could a secret weapon against climate change be hiding in the mountains of South America? According to the New York Times, maybe so.

Yesterday's edition includes a fascinating article about public transportation in Bogota. The Colombian capital - a city of some 9 million people - has implemented a high-speed bus network called TransMilenio ("TransMillenium"), which has simultaneously slashed passengers' commute times and reduced the city's fuel use by 60%.

How? In a sense, the network is a bus-subway hybrid. In other words, the city has taken the speed and efficiency of subways and the low costs of buses, combining them to create a completely new model.

TransMilenio operates with dedicated lanes; it doesn't share pavement with cars, trucks, or motorcycles. It is also designed to transfer large numbers of passengers very quickly (as opposed to traditional buses, where passengers board individually). Finally, the stations are large and centrally located (unlike traditional buses, which stop for passengers every 2-3 blocks). As such, TransMilenio moves large numbers of people very quickly through the city, and it doesn't get gridlocked during rush-hour traffic. A bus system is also significantly cheaper to build and operate than a subway system.

It's a terrifically innovative solution to a universal problem, and cities around the world are studying and adopting the TransMilenio model. If rapid-transit bus networks become commonplace, the decreased fossil fuel consumption could make a sizable dent in the climate change problem.