Think! by Edward de Bono Read Free Book Online

might even be a system of meal invitations where an ordinary household invited a stranger to dinner at an established price.
    In Australia, the mayor of a small town came to see me and told me that they had a problem with commuters who drove into the town and left their cars in the street all day. This made it impossible for people to find places

to park if they wanted to go shopping. The normal solution was to put in parking meters in order to limit parking. Should he do this? It would be expensive to set up and to run.
    What was theconcept here? There was a need to find a way to limit the time people could leave their cars parked in the street. Another way would be to legislate that if you parked your car in certain designated areas, you had to leave your headlights full on. You could not leave your car there for very long because you would be running your battery down. There was no way you could leave your car there all day. You could only park, rush into a shop, then rush out and drive off. There was a self-imposed limit.
    Theconcept fan
    Within the concept, there is also 'the concept fan'.
    You want to attach something to the ceiling in a room of normal height. The solution is simple. You look for a ladder. But you cannot find a ladder. Do you give up and decide that the task cannot be done?
    A ladder is only one way of 'raising me off the ground'. 'Raising me off the ground' is the concept, the fixed point. There are alternative ways of satisfying this fixed point – standing on a table, or having people lift me up.
    But 'raising me off the ground' is only one way of 'reducing the distance between the object and the ceiling'. This becomes the new fixed point and we look for alternatives for this.
    These alternatives are themselves concepts. One concept – to 'lengthen my arm' – can be carried out by 'using a stick'. Another concept alternative – to 'have the object travel to the ceiling by itself' – can be carried out by attaching the object to a ball and throwing it up to the ceiling.
    So, in this example, we go from an idea (a ladder) to a concept, which becomes a fixed point for other ideas. But we also go from the concept itself to a 'broader concept', which becomes a fixed point for alternative concepts. Each of these alternative concepts becomes a fixed point for alternative ideas. So the two layers of concepts are used to cascade alternative ideas.
    This is the 'concept fan'. At one end of the concept fan we have the purpose or objective of the thinking. How do we achieve the task? How do we get where we want to go? We work backwards. What broad concepts would move us towards this purpose? At the next level, what specific concepts would serve the broad concepts? Finally, what practical ideas could be used to deliver the concepts? This gives a cascade effect, with each level multiplying alternatives to the level below. It is a powerful way of generating alternatives to achieve a purpose.
    For an alternative example, take a piece of paper and a pen. You start with the defined purpose of what you are trying to achieve at the right-hand side of the page. For example, you might set out 'traffic congestion in cities'. The implied purpose is how to deal with the problem of

traffic congestion in cities. In your diagram, everything will need to flow or cascade from this point on the paper.
    The next level lays out the broad concepts, or 'thinking directions', which might help tackle the problem. These might be: reduce traffic; improve traffic flow; increase travel space.
    We then move backwards (towards the right-hand side of the page) to list the more specific concepts that could operate the broad concepts.
For 'reducing traffic' we might have: restrict the number of vehicles; discourage traffic; reduce the need to travel; multi-user vehicles.
For 'improving traffic flow' we might have: deal with peak travel problem at beginning and end of the day; remove junctions.
For 'increasing travel space' we might have: