Spend more time thinking ... about thinking

Dubai: Thinking about thinking. That's what Edward de Bono told the group of business men assembled for the Leaders in Dubai 2006 conference that they should be doing.

De Bono is widely regarded as an authority on creative thinking and coined the term "lateral thinking" in the '60s.

"It's very appropriate to talk about thinking in the Middle East," said de Bono. "The Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, said more about thinking than any other religious leader."

De Bono's speach focused not on the word Islam, but instead on the ideas of a group of people he calls the GG3, the Greek Gang of Three, better known as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

According to de Bono, the GG3 were the last people to set up standards for how we should think. Their ideas of argument, truth and logic were the foundation of thought in Western culture and in the Middle East, he said

"If we look at software, if we look at computers, we have tens of thousands of people writing software, but we have had no one writing software for the human brain for 2,400 years," he said.

However, the Socratic method, which uses arguments to explore ideas, is becoming outdated, he said.

"Argument is a primitive and silly way of exploring a subject," he said. "But we have been happy with that for 2,400 years, which shows how little we have done in improving our thinking."

Instead de Bono promotes his idea of "parallel thinking," which promotes problem solving by having everyone in a group looking at a problem in the same way.

De Bono also lectured on his "six hats," which is a way for groups to resolves problems quickly and avoiding arguments.

De Bono also focused heavily on the need for creativity and growth. He said the Chinese philosopher's belief that you could more from certainty to certainty helped stagnate the county, which 500 years ago was more technologically advanced that the rest of the world.

According to de Bono, such think prevented the Chinese from developing the hypotheses and other tools of reasoning that, had they developed in the East, would have made China a world superpower.