De Bono's Why So Stupid

De Bono's Why So Stupid?

by Brian Clegg

Whether you love or despise his work, you can hardly ignore the contribution Edward de Bono has made to the creativity field. Apart from coming up with the term 'Lateral Thinking' and the six hats technique, he has done more than anyone else in Europe to publicize the significance of creativity and to establish that there are techniques that can improve creative thinking.

De Bono's latest book, Why So Stupid, has just come out - and one aspect of it could almost symbolize the reaction his work generates. Is the way it is being sold a superb piece of creativity in its own right, or is it pure money grubbing? Because this normal-sized book costs 250 euros - that's around £169 or $265.

I must admit to admiration, and I even wonder if Doctor De Bono has taken some advice from me. In Instant Negotation I wrote:

You have written an excellent business book, but it’s quite short. Books of this length are typically £9.99, but the publisher wants to sell it at £16.99 to focus on the senior management market. How would you react? ... I’d suggest to the publisher that such a strategy needs to be more extreme. At £16.99 it seems like an overvalued thin book. It might be worth making it £79.99 with an expensive binding. It would be sold with a lot of very specific messages about the value of the book to a company, and its executive nature.

Of course, de Bono goes rather further, but in principle I've every sympathy with his argument that it represents good value for money compared with attending a management seminar that could cost at least twice as much. I have never understood why organizations are happy to spend hundreds of pounds on sending staff on training, but don't regularly buy them books at a fraction of the price.

But, and it's a big but, there is a serious problem with this pricing. The fact is, that the normal cost of business books is such that de Bono would expect to make a tidy sum from the sort of quantities he usually sells, and it's hard not to look at this price as containing an element of greed. It also seems very strange that a book that is aimed at totally re-examining how we think should be priced in a way that exclude 99+ per cent of the potential readership (and thinkers).

The decision on whether this is wonderful creativity or a rip-off must to some extent depend on content. The teasers seem interesting - de Bono argues passionately that our very mode of thought is fine for static, non-human analysis, but that we need something very different to deal with people and politics. He's so right - but the make or break for this book will be whether he can deliver an answer or just tell us about the problem. We've requested a review copy - watch this space on the content.

However I do think the pricing in its own right opens up an interesting debate.

Whatever your reaction, you've got to take your hat of (or even six of them) to de Bono - he keeps on making you think.

Brian Clegg is a director of Creativity Unleashed Limited and an author of over 20 books on business, creativity and science. You can find out more about Why So Stupid at www.whysostupid.com

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