My opinion only – I reckon obituaries ought not be used as an opportunity to put the boots in.
Today, it was disappointing to see the prominence given to negative criticism of Edward de Bono in the Weekend Financial Review (see below).
The snide style of “de Bono was a purveyor of tosh who traded on bureaucrats’ gullibility and used pseudoscientific jargon to repackage the blindingly obvious” struck me as both cheap and galling.
Yes he did not invent lateral thinking – but he marketed its value with great skill.
For me, since his breakthrough in 1967, he was a promoter of “the value of thinking about questions from different perspectives / lenses / points of view”. Or, as he modelled it, with different hats (yet another illustration of promotional smarts).
Over decades of using them as a facilitator, I have found de Bono’s tools to have been accessible in their formatting and powerful in their effect. Many people have appreciated and benefitted from them – most especially those who had been indoctrinated in narrow ways of thinking.
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