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 •Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk at the NIIT campus in Gurgaon, and my guest today is a very special personality. In fact, it would be more apt to call him a legend -- Dr Edward de Bono, whose thinking is shaping the way we should be thinking, all over the world, from the boardrooms in Manhattan to the classrooms in Cambodia. Dr de Bono, so wonderful to have you on Walk the Talk. Welcome to India. You talk about lateral thinking, and this, in some ways, is a land of circular thinking.

(Laughs) Well, interestingly, today people talk about big problems in our climate and all that. What I'm talking about is a much bigger problem, which is the poor state of world thinking: that our thinking is not very good. And we have essentially done nothing about thinking outside mathematics for 2,400 years, since the gang of three -- the Greek gang of three (Socrates, Aristotle, Plato) -- designed 'software' for thinking, which we've used ever since.

•With Buddha somewhere around the same time, as well.

Okay. And it is very much based on judgment. Now in a conflict situation, we judge who's right, who's wrong. What we don't use enough is design -- how to design the way forward. Also, another factor, perception is by far the most important factor in thinking, and research by cognitive psychologists has shown that in thinking, 90 per cent of the errors are errors of perception, not of logic. And if your perception is wrong . . . your logic can be erroneous.

•And perception comes from prejudice, and vice-versa.

It can be from prejudice. Unless you develop habits of opening up your perception . . . I'll give an example. In South Africa, in the Karee mines, where seven different tribes work, there have been 210 major fights every month based on traditional hostility. Colleagues of mine taught different ways of thinking to these totally illiterate minds -- never been to school one day -- and what happened? The fights dropped from 210 a month to just four. Now, in other words, once you change people's perceptions, you change their emotions, you change their behavior. Very powerful, very powerful. Our existing thinking is very good. The rear left wheel in the motorcar is very good, nothing wrong with it. But if you believe that was all you needed, that's not enough. We need perceptual thinking, we need creative thinking, we need design thinking, we need logical thinking. All of them, yes. But judgment and logic are not enough.

•Because, you know, different cultures also think differently. In India, we take great pride in our innovativeness, in a way, and yet we reverse engineer everything. I'll give you an example. When the US Air Force came here for a joint exercise, the Indian Air Force contingent commander was asked, 'The US aircraft are so much modern, so powerful, how will you handle them?' He said, 'We have very good training, we have very good motivation, and above all, we have the Indian jugaad.' Now, jugaad is a very Indian term for innovativeness. We put a few things together. And they actually got the better of the Americans. So how do you look at that? Have you had a chance to figure out this Indian circular thinking? It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't work.

Well, it's a bit like the Italians. The Italians have a very complicated political system. What makes Italy work is the concept of 'everything can be arranged'. And there is a certain amount of creative thinking in that. But it's not the same as changing basic ideas. It's finding a way around.

•You won't be surprised that an Italian-born is our most powerful leader right now. Sonia Gandhi.

(Laughs) I often say, 'There's an India which is mainly Hindu, and so on. And the president was a Muslim (A.P.J. Abdul Kalam), the leader of the biggest party is Italian, and the prime minister is a Sikh.

•The Speaker of our Parliament is a communist, who doesn't believe in any god.

(Laughs) That's good, it shows that you have tolerance.

•Our new vice-president is a Muslim. And yet there's an Indian way of thinking that cuts across religious lines.

You know something interesting about Islam? The Prophet Muhammad had more to say about thinking than any other religious leader.

•Is that so?

In the Hadith, he says, 'One hour of thinking is better than 70 years of praying.' He says, 'The ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr.' He says, 'One learned man gives more trouble to the Devil than a thousand worshippers.' That's Mohammad. In the Koran there are 130 verses about thinking. So, actually, when I go to the Middle East and tell them this, they don't know.

•You've been to India before and met Dr Kalam.

I first came when Lord Mountbatten was the Viceroy, and I'll tell you a really amazing story told to me by Edwina, Lady Mountbatten. At a state dinner, every chair has a coloured ribbon because Hindus don't eat meat and the Muslims don't eat pork, okay? For dessert she served zabaglione, and Mr Jinnah said, 'This is wonderful, what's in it?' She said, 'There's eggs, and there's . . .' She realised there's marsala . . . and he's a Muslim, so she left the marsala out. Six months later, before leaving India, she gets a phone call from Mr Jinnah, saying, 'Can you let us have your cook?' And she says, 'Why?' And he says, 'Our cook has been trying for the last six months to make zabaglione without the marsala.' (Both laugh) I think there's tremendous potential in India, and one time I had a meeting with Rajiv Gandhi, and I told him about the work we are doing in schools, and he was very enthusiastic. And then he asked me to go and see the minister for education, Mr Narasimha Rao, and (laughs) let's say he was less enthusiastic. Nothing happened. But if you teach thinking to youngsters, it makes a huge difference. I give you two examples. Teaching thinking to unemployed youngsters in England, teaching thinking for just five hours, increased the employment rate 500 per cent, stronger than anything they had ever done. Because these kids had left school thinking they were stupid, and once they realised they could think, they took charge of their lives and got themselves jobs. And there's a centre in London taking in youngsters who are too violent to be taught in ordinary schools . . . they'd stab the teachers, set the school on fire. Twenty years ago, the principal started teaching thinking to those youngsters. He's now done a 20-year follow-up and he's found that those youngsters who were taught thinking, the rate of conviction is one-tenth compared to those not taught thinking. Also, research shows that teaching thinking improves performance in every subject by between 30 and a hundred per cent. And yet we don't teach thinking . . . in most countries. In Venezuela every school is required by law to teach thinking. I was told that in Canada about 40 per cent of the schools do it. But thinking is a skill, the most important human skill, and we don't teach it deliberately, formally in school.