Brainstorming using the Six Thinking Hats

This video takes the idea of Brainstorming, covered in "An Introduction to Brainstorming techniques" (   • An introduction to Brainstorming tech...  ) and looks at it through the lens of The Six Thinking Hats technique for creative thinking. We run through an example sequence of thinking hats that could easily be used in a two-hours problem solving session.

By combining Brainstorming and the Six Thinking Hats, you will be able to both come up with ideas and quickly evaluate them, during a single session. This offers an advantage over the traditional approach to Brainstorming developed by Alex Osborn, as combining the creative session with the evaluation session, you can greatly reduce the time needed to generate potential solutions and assess those to be taken forward.

As well as talking through a potential sequence of Six Thinking Hats, we also give a few tips on how to run such a session.

To help navigate the video, we have included a timeline below:

0:00 Introduction
0:30 Issues with the traditional approach to Brainstorming
0:47 Combining Brainstorming and the Six Thinking Hats
1:24 The role of the facilitator
1:49 Blue Hat
2:06 White Hat
2:20 Green Hat
2:43 A summary of the Structured Brainstorming approach
3:55 Red Hat
4:18 Using Dot Voting
4:58 Black Hat
5:35 Yellow Hat
5:50 Notes on the yellow and black hats
6:20 Red Hat
6:40 Blue Hat
6:55 The benefits of combining Brainstorming with the Six Thinking Hats

If you need a reminder of Edwards De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, you should check out our overview of the technique (   • Six Thinking Hats  ) that introduces the purpose of each of the Six Thinking Hats.

The rights in the Intellectual Property of Edward de Bono are retained by Edward de Bono Ltd. You can learn more about the Six Thinking Hats at https://www.deBono.com