David - no written evidence or references i am afraid - sorry. I thought it worth noting the following however. I am a de Bono fan - I think our heads must be similarly wired and I appreciate his perspective.

In teaching architectural design I have employed both the Six Hats, and the Random Word for Creativity ('Think! Before it's too late'), both to what I thought was very good effect. Personally, I considered the learning and processes associated with the Random Word of greater benefit than the Six Hats, but my students disagreed - they thought that the Six Hats was fantastic.

Geoff,

many thanks for this. I too am a fan of the various thinking tools and want to utilise them as part of a module I hope to put together. But, being a bit of a pedant I also wanted to ensure that the various 'tools and techniques' worked. That is, there is some empirical data showing improved problem finding/solving when using them.

Having said that, some colleagues and I are in the midst of exploring how use of the six thinking hats compares to the 'six good men' in problem finding so i'll keep you posted.

I think of the six hats as a metaphor, and a pretty good one, but not a valid model of the mind. If you want validity, I suggest you go to the empirical research (e.g., Creativity Research Journal). But I am not criticizing the Hats metaphor. Good for communication and self-reflection. It just not a scientific theory, I suppose you could say.

I agree with Mark - and it's an important point to note. de Bono has been very successful in selling the idea of creativity, but for "scientific" methods you need to look to journal like the CRJ. The danger with some of the "popular" creativity literature is that it lacks the empirical evidence, or focuses only on limited aspects of creativity, and can give a false impression of what it needed to foster creativity. I'm not particularly picking on de Bono, but I think that it tends overlook some of the harder work of creativity that we encounter when we look beyond cognitive approaches. I think we are all in agreement, in terms of looking for validated methods. Personally, if I was looking for validity etc, I wouldn't go down the de Bono route, even if it is popular and catchy.

Mark, David,

Many thanks for this - and apologies for the slow response been ill and away. I agree about the issue of popular tools lacking empirical support. So much so that we've just run a study examining the effectiveness of the six hats in a problem construction task - so watch this space.

Hi David - as your post is over 2 years ago I am wondering if you are still interested in de Bono's thinking tools and the Six Thinking Hats - I am currently writing my PhD thesis after working within 6 organisations with teams using de Bono's thinking tools for at least 6 months, including the 6 Thinking Hats; includes interviewing 29 people who have used de Bono's tools for periods ranging from 6 months to over 20 years and analysing my own thinking journals consistently applying de Bono's thinking tools to workplace issues over the period 2000-2015 - I have also conducted academic research with what happens when small business entrepeneurs used Lateral Thinking with 30 interviews. In regards to research on the use of de Bono's thinking tools there is much more academic research than people realise. Cheers Ali

Hello Ali, 

I was delighted to see your response as I would like to recommend this approach to some of the teams that I'm working with! In my experience, we can often get caught with the black or the red hat without realising that hours may have been spent without an outcome. Could you please point me to the right direction? Looking forward to hearing from you, thank you. Regards, Virge 

Hi Virge - as I am in Australia sorry I can't just drop in and have a coffee with you :( ... I suggest you contact the Edward de Bono Foundation - based in Ireland - they conduct accredited training, workshops, facilitation etc. in all of de Bono's tools including the Six Thinking Hats. Telephone: +35318250466 email: [email protected] They are in the Dunshaughlin Business Park, Dunshaughlin, County Meath. Not sure if this is what you meant by 'point me in the right direction'??? Cheers Ali

Used by IBM.

Just Google 'IBM uses six thinking hats' to get multiple results about it.

The Six Thinking Hats technique, which belongs to researcher de Bono, has been tested in many thinking researches in the field of educational psychology and teaching methods. These studies have proven successful and some people in the field of human development apply it