Six Thinking Hats is a psychological self-help book written by Edward de Bono. This book teaches how group discussions and individual thinking can be carried in a better manner and understood using six thinking hats.

Each of the six hats has a different colour and represents six unique types of thoughts. The first is the white hat which involves making use of all the information that is currently available. Next, the red hat is used for participants to define the problems. Since participants generally tend to give negative remarks, the next hat used is the yellow hat. This hat asks participants to give positive aspects of the problem. The black hat asks participants to consider negative aspects of the problem. The green hat encourages participants to use creative thinking to overcome the problem. In the end, the blue hat is used as it allows participants to evaluate if the process has helped find a solution.

Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono is a great book as it talks about a helpful process to brainstorm ideas for any organisation to use. The book can be used in meetings to use time efficiently, to explore various other thinking styles, to find other alternative solutions faster and for parallel thinking. This book was published by Penguin UK in 2009, in paperback.

Key Features

• The Six Thinking Hats method has been trialed within the United Kingdom civil services.


• This method has also been used by Speedo researchers in the development of swimsuits.