Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking Tools in Use

Results: The Tools Work. Some Global Examples 

1. The Eurythmics wrote a note of, “thanks to Edward de Bono” on the cover of a best selling album. 

2. Australia won America’s Cup in 1982. 

3. A division of Siemens reduced product development time by 50%. 

4. ABB was able to reduce a series of multinational project meetings from 30 days to 2 days. 

5. After learning de Bono creative thinking skills, fights between miners at a South African mine were reduced from 210 a month down to 4. 

6. A group of engineers at Rocketdyne, a division of Boeing, credit using the lateral thinking tool, random entry, to figure out how to boost the thrust power on a new rocket launcher engine from 88% to over 100%.

7. Legislation has passed in California and many countries, mandating that industries along rivers install their water input downstream of their output to clean up water pollution. 

8. MobiFon-Connex, the first mobile telecommunications company to win a GSM license in Romania, credit using Six Thinking Hats in all phases of their Business Process Reengineering project for helping them accomplish the following impressive improvements in customer service:

   1. The average speed to answer a customer phone call went from 225 seconds to 40 seconds

   2. The average number of phone calls per customer, per month, dropped from 3 calls to 1.28 calls

   3. A new point of sales process was introduced which reduced activation time from 8 hours to less than 15 minutes

   4. Customer retention -  customer churn was reduced by over 50%

   5. A bad debt process was introduced that reduced bad debt from 4% to 2.18%

9. Peter Ueberroth, the organizer of the very successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, tells how he used de Bono’s thinking methods to generate the ideas that changed the Games from an event that no city in the world wanted due to the financial drain it created, to an event cities compete for because of the profits ($150 m) generated in Los Angeles. The profits are still supporting sports programs for youth in the city.
    

10. DuPont benchmarked every creativity process on the market for its Creativity Center. Dr. David Tanner, then head technical director of DuPont, says that the de Bono techniques were critical to DuPont. For example, using Lateral Thinking techniques to reengineer the manufacturing process of Kevlar©, nine steps in the process were eliminated saving $30 million.
     

11. British Airport Authority implemented a new approach to parking at Heathrow Airport. Use of the techniques resulted in lower costs, reduced traffic and improved customer satisfaction.
     

12. Six Thinking Hats® is widely used at Prudential Insurance, the largest insurance group in the world. In fact, images of the six colored hats are woven into their Canadian carpet. Ron Barbaro, former CEO of Prudential -Canada, used de Bono’s techniques to develop one of the most successful products for the insurance industry, “Living Benefits.”
     

13. Six Hats is Changing World in Rural Cambodia: Food, Water, & Health Crises. Fragile food production, inadequate water supplies, and a poor health system plagued the region. Each village had but one water source. Health insurance was nonexistent, and individual sickness meant total economic failure for the whole family. A number of  Cambodians were trained to use Six Hats. The results are dramatic. Each village now has 20 or more water points. Over 1,000 water pumps have been installed and are being used. Three volunteers have started a family planning clinic that has the highest usage of any clinic in the country. Villagers are implementing food security solutions.
     

14. In March 1996 when reports of the "mad cow" disease created widespread panic throughout Europe, many beef processing plants experienced huge overnight losses as consumers stopped buying beef. Six Thinking Hats® was instrumental in saving one of Europe's largest beef processing companies. 86% of  turnover was lost overnight. Not surprisingly, it was an extremely difficult task to try to think in such circumstances. Managers were fully occupied coping with the sudden loss of business. Twelve people from this company met for a 60-minute meeting using the Six Thinking Hats®. 65 ideas were generated; 30 cost-reduction ideas and 35 commercial ideas. They were evaluated through the Yellow Hat and Black Hat processes at subsequent meetings. The results: 25 ideas were put into place. Major capital investment was placed in a new plant to participate in the Government OTMS Scheme. The in-house-only Distribution Division went 100% open-market commercial and established such a reputation and portfolio of business that it has had to expand. The overall result is that they came through the crisis with a strong company and survived six long weeks of no revenue.
     

15. Lateral Thinking was used to develop new end uses for Lycra. Using the escape technique - Applications of Lycra for non-persons led to these new uses: stretch clothing for dolls and warm-up suits for racehorses. 

Lynda Curtin, The Opportunity Thinker, is a member of the APTT Global network, a de Bono organization.