Practical imagination

Imagination is a socially shaped, foundational human capacity that is critical for navigating complexity, challenging dominant systems and shaping more just and desirable futures.

imagination is a form of social practice, not an individual fantasy. It is embedded in everyday life and shaped by flows of media, migration and political economy. Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu showed how the habitus—our embodied disposition shaped by social class and history—influences what we perceive as possible or impossible. Imagination is not fr... See more

Ann Pendleton-Jullian explains how this capacity is not only practical—it is also performative and embodied. When we admire characters like Sherlock Holmes, it is not simply for their logic. Holmes, when asked if he has a solution, often answers with a number—“Yes, three” or “Yes, seven”—signaling the number of hypothetical scenarios he has already... See more

Creativity typically refers to applied problem-solving, often operationalized through practical techniques. It is possible to train creativity like a muscle—to generate novelty through recombination, transformation or adaptive iteration. Creativity thrives within constraint and is usually focused on producing outcomes. Imagination, however, is some... See more

In futures studies, imagination is often described as the precondition for anticipation: we can only shape futures we are able to imagine. Without imagination, we remain trapped within the constraints of the present, repeating and refining what already exists.

The firm as an engine of imagination, Bronk and Beckert argue that corporations are not just economic entities but producers of imaginaries. Their strategies, forecasts and design briefs function as narrative infrastructures that define what futures are seen as legitimate, profitable or inevitable. Designers working within such environments often b... See more

Imagination must be understood as a critical responsibility—not as a resource to extract, nor a differentiator in markets, but as a capacity that must be cultivated and protected. In a world increasingly driven by predictive models, short-term optimization and commodified creativity, the role of designers is not simply to generate novel ideas, but ... See more

Reclaiming imagination from this epistemic capture means recognizing that other ways of imagining have existed all along: relational, embodied, collective, often rooted in resistance. Indigenous cosmologies, Black speculative traditions, feminist temporalities and minoritarian storytelling all offer ways of imagining that do not reproduce hierarchy... See more

Creativity typically refers to applied problem-solving, often operationalized through practical techniques. It is possible to train creativity like a muscle—to generate novelty through recombination, transformation or adaptive iteration. Creativity thrives within constraint and is usually focused on producing outcomes. Imagination, however, is some... See more