Vitamines

Jamais le dernier à assurer sa promotion et celle de ses techniques de réflexion, Edward de Bono livre dans son message hebdomadaire du 23 mai dernier, "Olympic Games", des indiscrétions sur les J.O. de Pékin 2008 : London and Paris are full of notices promoting the 2012 Olympic Games. I wonder how many people seeing these notices know that the continuation of the Olympic Games is due in part to me. The 1976 Games were held in Montreal and lost a huge amount of money. After Montreal no city in the world wanted the Games. Fortunately, Moscow agreed to host the 1980 Games because they had a different accounting system. After Moscow there was again the problem of finding a city to host the Games. Finally, Los Angeles agreed to host the Games. For the first time in history the Games made a considerable profit. After Los Angeles, cities round the world compete strongly to get the Games. So much so that bribes are even alleged. When Peter Ueberroth, the organiser of the successful Los Angeles Games, was interviewed by the Washington Post he was asked how he had made such a success of the Games. He told how he had used 'Lateral Thinking' to generate the new ideas and concepts that were needed. Someone sent me this cutting. I wrote to Peter Ueberroth and asked him where he had learned his Lateral Thinking. He reminded me that he had been my host when I talked to the Young Presidents Organisation in Boca Raton Florida in 1975. From that ninety minute talk he took some of the principles and tools of lateral thinking and applied them nine years later to the design of the Los Angeles Games. That says much for his leadership and ability. For this reason when I was in Beijing two years ago, the Olympic Committee asked for a special meeting with me. We generated some interesting ideas which may be used in 2008. Il est encore trop tôt pour savoir quel sera l'impact du "lateral thinking" sur la tournure que prendront les jeux chinois. En attendant, on peut toujours s'amuser à penser latéralement avec la liste d'énigmes fournit par Paul Sloane ou en plongeant dans les archives mises à disposition par Arlet Ottens.

Ailleurs, dans un texte écrit après un séjour en Chine dans le cadre du World Economic Forum qui l'a amené à donné des conférences dans divers lieux, tels le Beijing Olympic Committee, le Beijing Institute of Technology, China Central TV et une conférence publique, texte que l'on trouve sur le site Thinking Managers, E. de Bono fournit son analyse du retard chinois : As a culture, the Chinese are highly intelligent, very disciplined and hard-working and show a high respect for each other (see the Beijing traffic problem). The economy is growing by about 7.3% p.a at the moment. Two thousand years ago the Chinese were far ahead of the West in science and technology. They had gunpowder and rockets. They had invented printing and paper long before the West. Had China continued at the same rate of progress, today China would easily be the dominant economic power in the world. So what happened? The Chinese had a formal and civilised society very early. This had two effects. The first is that you advanced by doing things the way they should be done. The incredibly stiff Civil Service exams meant that the brightest youngsters aspired to do things in exactly the right way. The second effect is that you use your intelligence to adjust to the world rather than to change the world. Bernard Shaw put it neatly: 'Progress is due to the unreasonable person. The reasonable person seeks to adjust to the world. The unreasonable person seeks to change it'. Then there were the scholars, the academics and the mandarin class in general. They sought certainty. They described things as they were. There was no room for ambiguity, possibility or 'maybe'. This traditional deadening effect of the scholar class (also present in the West) held back progress and was the basic reason behind the 'Cultural Revolution'. That is not to justify the way this revolution was carried out. It seems the Chinese never developed the 'hypothesis'. Without that key piece of 'mental software', progress came to an end. Where did the hypothesis come from? It came from ancient Greece and the pre-Socratic thinkers, who were much brighter than the Gang of Three but were suppressed by the Gang and, much later, by Christian thinkers.

In science the hypothesis provides a framework for collecting evidence and designing experiments. In Karl Popper's view you should set up the most 'reasonable' hypothesis and then seek to refute this. This approach is very seriously flawed. If you only have the most reasonable hypothesis, you can only see the evidence in one way. You need other hypotheses, even if they are unreasonable. After all, reason is only a framework of expectation set up by past experience. In technology the hypothesis is the 'vision'. We imagine a possibility and then look to see how we can make it happen. So it is possible that this very intelligent Chinese culture was brought to a standstill through the absence of this key piece of mental software.

Il ne s'arrête pas là et se pose en sauveur de la Chine. En effet, ses travaux constitueraient, selon lui, la vitamine dont la Chine a besoin pour devenir une puissante nation :

The human body needs food. It also needs vitamins. The vitamins work with key enzymes to carry out essential work. Without a key vitamin, life can stop. The 'possibility system' is a key vitamin in progress. That is why the Chinese have become so interested in my work. They see this as the key missing vitamin in their thinking. I agree. I believe that if this 'vitamin' is introduced in all schools and at all levels in society, China will become a very powerful nation indeed.