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

We need to make intentional spaces for people to tell, share, or co-create these stories, spaces that are well facilitated and feel safe and inviting.

‘Saying yes to your partner’s idea represents a risk. You have to let an alien idea in, and if you have to build on it, you have to let it influence you. You can’t plan your response in advance, it depends on what your partner offers.’

As the scholar Richard Sennett puts it, ‘Modern capitalism works by colonising people’s imagination of what is possible.’

As the filmmaker Adam Curtis told The Economist, ‘People are frightened of instability. But the job of a good politician is to give them a story that says “yes this is risky, but it’s also thrilling and it might just lead to something extraordinary.”’

‘You could get out of bed and think, “I have no idea what’s going to happen today, but I think it might be something quite nice. I’ll go round the corner and have a look”.… There would be joy in the air, and joy is very radical. Joy is a radical force, because it connects us all to life, and life is enthusiastic for life.’70

the internet is the mental equivalent of junk food. We travel to places in our minds, but little of what we encounter is nourishing. We return from such a journey with little of real value and a nagging sense that we could have used our time more productively.

They show how the right questions can kick past that inner (and outer) critic who says nothing can really ever change, and how they can drive new thinking. The right questions balance imagination and action.

we will know the world is becoming more imaginative because our daily life will feel as though it is becoming more rich with possibility, more full of imaginative ideas, more open, less fearful, less anxious, more open to ideas.

It was as though he were learning to see again, to notice, to pay attention to the world around him, to see his world in more detail, more colour, more focus. It was coming alive to him.