Humans have a hidden super power which enables them to do anything, anytime, anywhere and create anything they want within a split second. The only con is not everyone is aware of this and know how to leverage this superpower in them.
This superpower is none other than imagination. Its the most underrated human skill and is often misinterpreted.
Today we will deep dive in Imagination, its superpower, its dark sides, some examples of innovation led by imagination and how you can leverage imagination to excel in your life.
Without further adieu let’s begin…
Imagination and its superpower
Imagination is your experiment lab where the first seeds of any revolutionary innovations are born and raised. Where you have no boundaries and limits. In imagination you can combine your experiences, various types of senses through sight, touch, taste and other senses. The mental images formed in imaginary playground are the first wire frames and prototypes of a new creation. Imagination is your highest skill where you can get the best of your ideas. Create things which are not even possible in real world, go beyond borders, rules, dimensions and can fathom what’s beyond the visible universe.
But the creative activity of your imagination is directly proportional to the richness and variety of previous experience because previous experience provides the material seeds which helps in creation of new fantasy products. The richer a person’s experience, the richer is quality of their imaginary products. This is why a child has a less rich imagination than an adult, because their experiences are limited.
All the great works of past were the result of previously accumulated experiences. Every act of imagination starts with the accumulation of experience, the richer the experience, the richer the act of imagination.
Ideas and imagination take shape, amalgamated into existence by combinatorial nature of past experiences. To create is to combine existing bits of insight, knowledge, ideas and memories in new forms and new interpretations. Its like playing with various scattered experiences and connecting the seemingly dissociated to see patterns where others see chaos.
Imagination not only helps you imagine a new reality it also helps you to understand the existing reality in a deeper way. You might be familiar with that imaginary problem solving in physics or while reading a story and creating rough sketch of its characters in your imaginary land on how it might look like.
Imaginations help us understand how things work in a better way. Humans learn and understand things when they can imagine a picture of what’s being said, we are visual creatures and imagination is our greatest asset to understand our world.
Dark side of imagination
Every invention and product go through two major phases, first one being the idea phase and the second being the execution phase. As with every lesson, you can’t just be great at imagination and neglect execution phase in the dopamine rush of imaginary ideas which don’t exist in real.
A real innovation is when it can be seen and used by a large number of people and that happen after it becomes visible and usable for a large number of people. The first mental prototype is just one step to get closer to the end product.
After first imaginary prototype, the idea phase is over. Now all of its worth is directly proportional to how good is its execution. For a great inventor to become great they need to put their fantasies into reality and test them further.
As with every great advise imagination has its own dark side.
It may give you a false illusion of progress and achievement when there are none.
You may confuse reality with imagination.
The major one is getting over involved and attached to the idea itself and never gets into execution mode.
Innovations led by Imagination
Imagination has brought mankind so far through the tunnels of Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. It led Columbus to discover America, Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, touchscreen smartphone and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities.
Harry Potter is the prime example of Imagination. Its one of the best creation of human mind at its best which is getting passed to every generation. Every great book on fantasy is the external creation of imagination and creativity of its author.
There is one thing common to all innovation, they are all preceded by imagination.
Before a new innovation comes into picture, someone imagines a future where that problem is getting solved and the experience of using a certain product like mobile phones is getting better with touchscreen smartphones. If you look closely all the innovation that have happened, they were part of someone’s dreamland creation and then took its shape. Your imagination is where you draft out possible inventions and polish it out in real world use cases. Wright brothers imagined a future where they could fly like birds and worked towards it. They did their experiments and trials in spite of all the popular dogmas around flying and the dangers associated with flying.
Innovation is applied imagination. Imagination can create amazing and wonderful things and innovation gives shape to what’s imagined.
Imagination is most powerful when we think of ideas related to reality, this type of imagination is what originally leads to innovation. But if you only remain in the world of imagination, you won’t be able to change reality.
To produce innovative breakthroughs, you should know how to use the imagination to enhance reality and convert it into applied imagination.
Future of Imagination
The main accelerator of all the progress of humanity is closely associated to the rate of communication and we are entering in an age where this rate of communication will become so quick, fast and immersive that the pace of progress that comes out of it will solely depends upon the quality of our creative ideas and imagination.
Imagination is becoming the key commodity of our time. Some of its early signs can be seen in rise of virtual reality technology like Oculus Rift and HoloLens which is going to replace the current text-and-graphic dominated internet. We are entering in an age of 3D internet where imagination and creativity will be key to creating user experience and value.
Charlie Magee a designer and writer in his essay "The Age of Imagination: Coming Soon to a Civilization Near You" dated back in 1993 proposes the idea that the best way to assess the evolution of human civilization is through the lens of communication.
The most successful groups throughout human history have had one thing in common: when compared to their competition they had the best system of communication. The fittest communicators—whether tribe, city state, kingdom, corporation, or nation—had a larger percentage of people with access to higher quality information, a greater ability to transform that information into knowledge, action, and more freedom to communicate that new knowledge to the other members of their group. (Source)
On top of that the rise of nanotechnology, biotechnology and artificial Intelligence is giving rise to a new hybrid technology which will create a world where anything that can be imagined will be possible, raising the importance of imagination as the key mode of human thinking.
Steps to improve your imagination
Here are some ways which can help you become more imaginative and creative in yours approach towards life.
Step 1: Take Time To Imagine
Make a dedicated place and special time where you can imagine. Don’t combine it with other activities. Find a free time when you are not preoccupied with anything either at the end of day or early morning.
In your imaginative practice don’t just think of Imagination to be exclusively used during the idea generation phase. It is useful throughout the innovation process from designing, packaging, marketing up to the customer experience of the final product. To truly develop an innovative product, you need great imagination at every step of the innovation ladder.
Step 2: Ask Open-Ended Questions
In your imagination practice, try to practice with the experiment itself. Ask open-ended questions with every twists and turns. Closed questions can narrow your thinking. Open-ended questions will allow you to think and imagine freely. Open questions will make you think of different directions because they are not focused in one direction.
You can add your own version of how you practice imagination as you explore more realms of imagination. Get your imaginary lens and see every object in your surrounding through that, and you will realize that you are just a step away from your dream world. Go for each and every details and see how it can become a reality and the future is yours.
Comment down your best experience with your Imagination.
Until then
Stay hungry, stay curious
Sneha Prajapati
Imagination is your ultimate superpower
Wow , well articulated
Wow , well articulated