Serious Creativity

According to the things we’ve learned in this course so far, we know that creativity requires delayed judgement, an innocent reaction to the whole world, and the use of right-brain thinking. However, these do not seem to help creativity very much. A different exercise can then be proposed, designed particularly for training and making creativity mix smoothly into everyday life. This is called “Six thinking hats”.

The six thinking hats are white, green, yellow, black, red, blue.

The hats might have a sequence “white, green, yellow, black, red, blue”. This is the sequence for a new topic. However, the sequence is not fixed but varied according to the situation.

One can ask another individual to put on/take off a hat of a particular color, and one can frankly express his thoughts under the protection of a hat. One can also ask the whole group to put on a hat of a specified color of hat for a while. The hats offer a chance to switch the mode of thinking.

Reference:

De Bono, E. (1995). Serious creativity. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 18(5), 12.