Edward de’bono’s six thinking hats:

brainstorming problems and

generating new ideas
Business case study presentation
 content
1. Introduction
2. What the model looks like
3. The origin of the model
4. Development of the model
5. The model in action
6. Some things to think about
Introduction
 What the model looks like
White hat: this is the hat of facts and figures. Whoever wears the white hat must consider the validity of the facts. What do we have? What don’t we have? What do
we need? How can we get it? Whose fact is it? Is it one that can be believed?

●● Red hat: this is the hat of hunches, emotions and feelings. The people wearing the red hat must consider the place of emotions in the thinking process. With this
hat they can share fears, likes, dislikes, loves and hates, and do not need to justify their thoughts. Feelings can be based on lots of experience and this could produce a
very strong intuition.

●● Black hat: this is the hat that prompts people to be careful and cautious. It points out difficulties, dangers and potential problems and as a result it prevents
mistakes. The people who wear the black hat must play devil’s advocate and suggest why something may not work. It points out why something might not fit the
concept. It is not a negative hat but one that brings people to reality. De Bono considers it to be one of the most powerful of the hats as long as it is not used to kill
ideas. The black hat can be brought out early on to see if there are any problems that need to be overcome and it can be used at the end to check that there are no
insuperable barriers.

●● Yellow hat: this hat is about logical thinking. Someone wearing the yellow hat would look at the feasibility and the benefits of an idea. It is associated with
positive thoughts and optimism.

●● Green hat: this is the hat of creative and lateral thinking. The people wearing the green hat need to be provocative, suggesting new concepts and alternative ideas.
The green hat can be used at any stage in the process

to get some new ideas. It is an antidote to the black hat, which says why

things cannot be done.

●● Blue hat: this is the hat of control and monitoring. The wearer ensures that the ideas remain focused and ensures that the guidelines in the model are observed.
They drive the team towards the goal
 The origin of the model

Edward de Bono is a physician, psychologist and consultant

specializing in lateral thinking. He published the Six Thinking
Hats as a book in 1985.2 This followed a prolific career of
authorship during which de Bono wrote papers and books on
different ways of thinking and problem solving. He is known
as ‘the father of lateral thinking’, a concept that he introduced
in 1967
 Development of the model

De Bono proposes that his six thinking hats model is flexible. Normally a session begins with the
blue hat, which sets the goals for the exercise. It also ends with the blue hat, at which time the team
can assess whether the goal has been achieved and agree on the next steps. The sequence of the other
colours of hats is up to the team. Often the white hat follows the blue one, so that at an early stage
ready knowledge can be shared on the subject. This could be followed by the green hat to generate
new ideas. The red hat allows people to express their feelings about these ideas. The yellow hat
raises discussion on all the benefits of the ideas before the black hat is introduced to warn of dangers
and difficulties. At any stage in the process, one of the colours could be reintroduced. For example,
feelings might change as the ideas are developed and the red hat could be donned two or three times
to collect the new feelings.
It is advised that people do not spend too long wearing each of the hats. Quick thinking is
encouraged and somewhere between two and four minutes per hat appears to be a recommended
time for discussion. That said, it is not intended that the time period should be limited. If there is a
good deal of background data on the subject, it may be that the white hat needs a much longer time
 The model in action
Six thinking hats have been credited with successfully improving the efficiency of all types of meetings. A famous example is
the use that Motorola made of the tool to develop a new high-tech hand-held device in the early days of computing.3 The
company carried out exhaustive research on consumers and, for a day, the team had white hat time as facts and figures on the
market were discussed. The group then moved into a green hat session to generate new product ideas. These were evaluated
using yellow and black hat thinking. Red hats then prioritized the best ideas. A successful product was developed and
launched under the brand name Accompli. It was a mobile virtual office, something that has been replaced now by the iPhone
and the Amazon Echo but which was highly successful at the time.

Another example was the use of the six hats by the Canadian newspaper – the Globe & Mail.4 The company was under
pressure in its classified ads department. The newspaper brought together 80 staff members from various disciplines and set
out to create a new classified ads section called Marketplace. Once the blue hat had set the goals for the exercise, a green hat
session generated a huge number of new ideas for Marketplace. These included ads that could be mixed with editorial content
to attract readers, ads that could be grouped thematically, removing lines from between the ads to create an easy flow and so
on. A redesign of this kind had previously taken a year to organize but, using the six thinking hats, they unveiled a successful
classified ads section in just four months
 Some things to think about

The six thinking hats tool needs a moderator.

This person should be able to explain what is required keep an eye on
time spent wearing each hat to ensure that things move quickly, and make
sure that the ideas are captured and recorded.
This person would usually wear a blue hat.
The team should return to a particular colour of hat if it is thought that
more ideas can be generated.
The six thinking hats activity can be made more fun if people wear
appropriately coloured hats, or move to a place in the room that is a