De Bono advocated "parallel thinking" in which all thinkers could reach a conclusion under a six-hat framework. They are human endeavours, which are defined as:

White Hat: An exclusive focus on information. It is about what we have, what we need and how to get it.

Red Hat: Feelings, intuition and emotions (they do not guarantee that you are always right).

Black Hat: Cautiousness, risk assessment and critical thinking. This hat forms part of the foundation of Western culture but is overused.

Yellow Hat: This is about the development of value sensitivity. How can benefits be made to happen? It is a waste of time to be creative if values are not detected.

Green Hat: This is creativity, exploration of new ideas, possibilities and hypothesis. The latter has been another foundation of the West's success in exploiting science and technology. De Bono cited the case of China which excelled with unrivalled technology 2,000 years ago, but they did not develop hypothesis for innovations among Chinese technicians.

Blue Hat: This is about the management and organisation of thinking.

De Bono said creativity was about the progress of the human race, but added that it was also about improvement and is a human asset in solving problems. It was also about change that was both a threat and an opportunity. "Creativity is essential in the thinking process," said de Bono.

Creativity was best nurtured under challenging circumstances, alternation and provocation, he said. It does not come automatically, because human brains were conditioned to be non-creative.

De Bono divided the human age into three groups: between the age 0-5 years when children in this group ask "why?"; between 5-12 years when they ask "why not?"; and from 12-75 years where this group is dominated by thinking "because".

"We have to get out of the 12-75 years group ideology and return to the question asked by the 5-12 years group," he said.