Six thinking hats

The Six Thinking Hats, designed by Dr. Edward de Bono, is an ingenious framework to think through a subject in a focused way that makes time and space for creative thinking [C-19]. It is used extensively in companies such as DuPont, IBM, Prudential Life Insurance, British Airways and Siemens to have efficient, productive meetings. 

The Six Thinking Hats can be used either individually or in groups. The worked examples below illustrate its use. The first (A) takes a hypothetical human resource issue, the second (B) concerns introducing a new business [C-2]. 

Facilitator managing the process, thinking about thinking. 

Choreographs the procedure, decides which hats to be worn. 

Responses Which four days How long each day All staff the same four days  

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A) The Company wishes to introduce a four-day week for all staff. It gathers representatives from within work groups and across them to discuss the issue using the Six Thinking Hats procedure. 

This phase of the innovation project ends by filtering ideas and narrowing them down to the few that are the best candidates for further development. See the KJ Method, Idea Harvesting and Treatment, and Six Thinking Hats to help you converge on the concepts that are ripest for commercialization. 

When you ve finished Idea Harvesting and Treatment, you should have increased the yield of viable ideas that can become solutions for your innovation opportunity. You can further evaluate these ideas using techniques like Six Thinking Hats (Technique 29) or Pugh Matrix (Technique 36). 

Although you can use Six Thinking Hats to generate ideas, it works equally well after you ve narrowed down the list of ideas to a couple of viable options. It can be tricky to keep the group on track, so you may consider additional training in this technique, or bringing in an experienced facilitator. 

Six Thinking Hats is a lateral thinking exercise created by Edward dcBono in the 1980s. During the exercise, team members wear (role-play) a metaphorical hat that represents a mode of thinking (Exhibit 29.1) ... 

Although Six Thinking Hats can be a lot of fun, it s also empowering because it makes use of every team member s intelligence and experience, and encourages constructive criticism. As a result, the team s performance and results are strengthened. 

Reason for the meeting, which includes a recap of the JTBD (see Jobs To Be Done, Technique 1), and the key idea(s) the team will evaluate using Six Thinking Hats. 

The Six Thinking Hats are about modes of behavior, not categories of people. 

If you re using Six Thinking Hats to generate new ideas, instead of evaluating a few key ideas, start with the green hat. 

What A collection of tools and methods (provocations, random entry, six thinking hats, concept triangle, etc.) based on creative thinking that fit with traditioneil queility improvement methods. The methods are serious, deliberate, and systematic they do not rely on acting crazy or pure natural teilent. 

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