IMAGINE ALL THE WORLD IMAGINING

“Twenty-first century society yearns for a leadership of possibility; a leadership based more on hope aspiration and innovation than on the replication of historical patterns of constrained pragmatism...the time is ripe for a cross-fertilization of the arts and leadership” (Adler, 2006: 487)

The Mechanics of Imagination

Among the World’s children starting ?school this year, 65% will end up doing jobs that haven’t been invented Yet (imagine that)!

·The certainty of Change, with the complete Uncertainty as to the precise Nature of that change has a profound and complex implication on business.

How businesses (and business schools) Learn to teach themselves is more important than what we teach?

?To LEAD them to want to learn, to nurture Curiosity, to encourage wonder and instil confidence. So later on they’ll have the tools for finding the answer to the questions we do not know yet?

As Csikzentmihalyi (Flow) argues, creativity requires not only unusual individuals, but a culture and field of experts that can foster and validate such work.

?Children start to demonstrate their creativity from at least the age of one?by exploring objects. By two, they can?invent ways to use new tools?on their own and from around eight years?they can even invent their own tools.

“Creative imagination” is what we normally consider to be creativity with a large C – Creative inspiration is notoriously elusive. Being able to train creativity or induce a state of creativity has therefore long been the aim of many artists and scientists.

?There are two phases to creative imagination. “Divergent thinking” is the ability to think of a wide variety of ideas, all somehow connected to a main problem or topic. It tends to be supported by?intuitive thinking, which is fast and automatic. You then need “convergent thinking” to help you evaluate the ideas for usefulness within the main problem or topic. This process is supported by?analytical thinking?– which is slow and deliberate – allowing us to select the right idea.

However, that doesn’t necessarily help you select a good one. For that, research suggests that the first requirement is actually?exposure and experience. The longer you have worked and thought in a field and learned about a matter – and importantly, dared to make many mistakes – the better you are at intuitively coming up with ideas and analytically selecting the right one.

Fantastical imagination

?For many people, the ability to become completely absorbed by an idea is key to finalising a successful, creative project. For that you need something scientists call “fantastical imagination”, probably best predicted by your?fantasy proneness?and?imaginative immersion. These describe your tendency to have highly vivid and realistic fantasies and level of absorption in imaginary worlds.

However, given that fantastical imagination can increase daydreaming and distract from everyday obligations, it may not seem like a desirable ability to have, at first glance.

But there are benefits. Fantasy engagement in children is associated with increased?creative imagination,?narrative ability, and?perspective taking. For adults, it may help improve?memory consolidation, creative problem-solving and planning.

Episodic imagination

“Episodic imagination”?is similar to fantastical imagination but predominantly makes use of real (episodic) memory details rather than imaginary (semantic) details when visualising events in our mind’s eye.

?This helps individuals to better imagine alternative pasts and learn from their mistakes or imagine their futures and prepare for them. The little research that?has been done on this so far?indicates that individuals with a higher capacity for visual imagery experience more sensory details when imagining their future.

?The best preparation for the future therefore is paradoxically to imagine the process – not the outcome – of your desired future event.?One study showed that when students imagined desired outcomes (good grades for an upcoming test) they performed significantly worse than students who imagined the process getting to the desired outcomes (imagining studying thoroughly).