Imagination Is Not Day-Dreaming

Imagination is a superpower. Every single change in society started in somebody’s imagination — or in a small group’s collective imagination — from women getting the vote, to the civil rights movement or better services for healthcare. Some say it’s the quality that makes us most uniquely human — especially our ability to collectively imagine the new.

But imagination is not recognised for what it is — the star stuff of truly radical innovation that builds a new world into being. It’s often dismissed as something associated with day-dreaming, fantasy and fiction. If a job candidate put “imagination” on their CV, it would certainly raise eyebrows. As early as school, we are told off for daydreaming, reinforcing from the start that this is someway a pointless or indulgent activity. What if this carried on throughout life with our organisational and civic systems constantly narrowing out imagination, rather than recognising its true importance?

It’s natural that in a period of austerity, imagination falls to the bottom of priorities. As we face scarcity and insurmountable challenges, people focus on efficiency, practical deliverables and getting things done. Imagination is seen as a distraction, something wooly and perhaps relevant for an away day, but not core to the building of new policy and systems.

Imagine if we’re wrong. As temperatures hit record level in the UK this week, there is a growing sense that we have lost our way. Things have gone wrong — and we need to put them right. But how do we do that when policies, responsibility, vision and action seem to be stuck in a gridlock? How can we solve some of these deep rooted problems — if we use the same approaches we will get the same answers we have always got.

The challenges we face are incredibly complex and cannot be solved by any one individual or solution alone. Just like a bee goes out to search many different locations for the perfect place for its hive before committing to one of them, so too the mind needs to wander and explore the different possibilities before choosing a way forward. Our imaginations can be incredibly helpful to paint different scenarios in our head and test them out through simulations.