de Bono is regarded by many as the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, innovation and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. He is equally renowned for his development of the Six Thinking Hats technique and the Direct Attention Thinking Tools. He is the originator of the concept of Lateral Thinking, which is now part of language. de Bono was born in Floriana, Malta, on the 19± May 1933. He was educated at St. Edward’s College and the Royal University of Malta. He graduated in science in 1953 mid medicine in 1956. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, holds an M.A. in psychology and physiology from Oxford, a D. Phil. in Medicine and also a Ph.D. from Cambridge. He has held faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. His background in selforganising systems led him to derive an understanding, which he then applied to the neural networks of the brain. His instruction in thinking has been sought by many organisations such as IBM, Prudential, GM, BT (UK), NTT (Japan), Nokia (Finland), Mondadori (Italy), Total (France), Siemens (Germany), Bosch (Germany), Ericsson (Sweden) and many others. His methods are now mandatory on the school curriculum in many countries and widely used in others. de Bono has written 65 books with translations into 37 languages and has been invited to lecture in 57 countries.
The appeal of de Bono’s work is its simplicity and practicality. It can be used by four-year-olds up to Nobel Laureates. de Bono is currently the Chairman of the Council of Young Enterprise Europe, which has a membership of 1,500,000 youngsters across Europe, Israel and Russia, who set up mini- businesses while at school. He has also established the World Academy of New Thinking (WANT) which is an association of those who believe in the need for new thinking and the importance of new thinking. ‘New Thinking’ means new perceptions, fresh alternatives, a change of emphasis and the generation and design of new concepts and ideas. The role of this Academy is specifically concerned with new thinking in conflict resolution, problem solving, economic development, education, health and most areas effecting daily life. He has also made television series’ including a BBC 10-part series of de Bono’s Thinking Course, which was also shown on stations throughout the USA.

The President of Malta has honoured de Bono as Officer of The National Order of Merit, in 1994.