From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want

In each field we can deliberately try to push the boundaries, developing sketches of alternative routes to see if they make sense, if they would work and if anyone would feel at home in a world where they were implemented. By multiplying these ideas across different fields, we create larger ‘possibility spaces’, a bigger menu of options for our soc

I’m convinced that we’re suffering from an ‘imaginary crisis’. By this, I don’t mean that the various crises around us aren’t real, but rather that there’s a deep malaise affecting our capacity for imagination, whether social or political.

Our assumptions of the future are being challenged: even what we took for granted now seems uncertain. And instead of asking: how did we get here? We are left with the question: what made us think we would never get here? If the unimaginable suddenly becomes a reality, then what is left to imagine? Is it still worth being hopeful? It appears that w

So imagination happens in the mind, often involves a new way of seeing, both literally and metaphorically, and feeds off a deeper shared unconscious. What else does it depend on? Everyone can imagine to some extent. We are all endowed with an ability to picture things which don’t exist. But social imagination—the ability to picture a future society