Pigeonhole Dr Edward de Bono, Mr Creative Thinking, at your own risk. Just try assuming he's all about heavy-duty, ponderous theories of how the brain works and he's ready to surprise you.
One minute his face lights up with mischievous glee as he tells a sequence of blonde jokes punctuated by chuckles, a rather incongruous subject area in which he demonstrates surprising expertise: "Two blondes are standing on either side of a canal. One shouts over to the other: 'How do I get over to the other side of the canal?' The other shouts back: 'But you ARE on the other side of the canal!'."
The next minute he is beginning a sentence: "When I spoke to the Indian Prime Minister last week" or picking apart the subtleties of Aristotelian philosophy.
He's his own best advertisement for his belief that we should immerse ourselves in a multiplicity of ways of thinking and doing - and all the better if those ways catch ourselves and others by surprise.
Now synonymous with the notion of "lateral thinking" and "creative thinking" that have inspired new ways of thinking about thinking for nearly four decades, de Bono fused his formal study of medicine and psychology with an understanding of computing and science and life in general.
Out of that mix, he has created a lucrative career as an academic, an author and an international adviser to schools, corporations and governments, garnering plenty of awards along the way. He even has had a planet named after him.
He first defined his ideas in 1967 in a book called The Use of Lateral Thinking (released in the US as New Think). Many of the terms he created then, such as "lateral thinking", are now so embedded in how we all think about thinking that they have become part of our vocabulary.
Born in Malta in 1933, de Bono qualified in medicine at the University of Malta and then travelled as a Rhodes Scholar, to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained an honours degree in psychology and physiology, and then a DPhil in medicine. He also holds a PhD from Cambridge and an MD from the University of Malta. He has held appointments at the universities of Oxford, London, Cambridge and Harvard.
In other words, he is a formidably intelligent brainbox but also rather endearing as his blonde joke stockpile demonstrates, and his mild scolding for ordering coffee (the wrong kind of caffeine for long-term brain power, apparently; he prefers tea).
Here last week to give the keynote speech at a Dublin City University Innovation Day conference on business and creativity, de Bono says businesses have always been a natural and receptive audience for the need to think (as the cliché now has it) "out of the box" - which is nothing if not lateral thinking.
"The interesting point is that when I wrote my first book, business as a sector was always very interested in the ideas."
The book discussed why simply arguing a point from a right or wrong perspective was not just unproductive, but counterproductive. Business, he said, was quick to understand that point.
"In the political sector, it is enough to prove you are right. In business, you can prove you are right until you are blue in the face and still go bankrupt the next week."
This tendency to view things as either right or wrong comes from what he calls "the GG3" - the "Greek Gang of Three" - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who have shaped our understanding of logic and argument for 250 years.
At the very heart of de Bono's concepts is his belief that logic, analysis and oppositional arguments do not support creative design or constructive thinking. "They are excellent, but not good enough."
It is a perspective that certainly seems to ring true for some of those whose careers are the epitome of creative thinking. Three Nobel laureates, for example, have written a set of forwards for de Bono's book I am Right, You are Wrong.
But what isn't "good enough" about such excellence?
"The brain is designed for making stable patterns for dealing with a stable system. That's fine but it is not creative thinking."
As we seek to fit what we think into standard patterns of thinking, we become "judgment oriented", says de Bono, rather than position oriented. In other words, people arrive at the negotiating table, a meeting or to discuss a project with one goal they are setting out to achieve. How much more open, adaptable, creative and results oriented it is to arrive with a range of potential positions - which is one of the techniques adopted by many companies that use his Six Thinking Hats discussion technique (which involves brainstorming from one of six different perspectives at a time).
Businesses also make the mistake of believing that IT enables them to think better simply because they have more data. But more passive information doesn't spur creativity and the notion that information can solve everything is dangerous: "You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging a hole deeper," he says.
Entrepreneurs would seem to be the ultimate creative thinkers, but de Bono disagrees. "Often they have creativity when they start up but not when running the company."
Key for entrepreneurial success is single-minded determination, belief in the possibility of your success, and the willingness to follow your ideas. The latter can be very difficult, especially as certain cultures push against such thinking. Italy is a poor climate for entrepreneurs because people go home in the evening, go to dinner with friends and run their ideas past them - a sure way to kill a creative and daring proposal, he says.
Paradoxically, despite a class system which should try to enforce the status quo and suppress cleverness, especially from lower social classes, the English are very good at invention, says de Bono. The reason? "The evolution of the eccentric." The English like eccentrics and they are often creative ideas people.
He also contrasts the cultures of the US and Japan. The US "has creative energy and tremendous can-do" - but the brutal, litigious open market means that, out of 12 ideas, maybe two will go to market in three years' time. Whereas in Japan, which is "not a very creative society, but they take ideas very seriously", they might have only four good ideas but they will recognise they are good ideas, and three will make it to market.
He says that, within an organisation, "unless the chief executive or someone very senior shows some interest in creativity, nothing happens", even in companies that say they value creativity.
Creativity in the corporate world is seen by management "as either an expectation or a risk". If it is viewed as a risk, no one will try to be creative, he says.
This is particularly true in the UK, which is a risk-averse culture and therefore not friendly for entrepreneurs and start-up companies. "In England we don't even have a word to describe a fully justified venture which, for some reason, doesn't succeed." Yet having run a failed company and gone back to start a new venture is seen elsewhere as a badge of honour, he says.
"You get executives whose business is continuity and problem-solving", the antithesis of the risk-taking and innovation that drives truly successful companies, says de Bono. "The notion of change and innovation as part of progress is essential."
