Imagination, Philosophy, and Business Management

Albert Einstein once said “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”. He went on to add “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere”. It is common sense to infer that all the innovations of our modern life started with imagination. There would have been no electricity and no electric bulb had Faraday or Edison not imagined them in the first place. That applies to anything and everything of our modern lives – from telephones to computers and even the world wide web. Imagination is a fascinating concept and is often misunderstood or purposely misinterpreted. Various questions arise whenever we discuss imagination. How is imagination different from dreams or is day-dreaming a part and parcel of imagination. Is imagination a component of consciousness or whether both are either same or their sources are the same. Various luminaries from diverse domains have looked at imagination from different perspectives and have tried to give it a particular shape in our minds. However, arriving at a single particular definition of imagination remains quite elusive. One thing however is clear about the concept of imagination. This characteristic of human beings called imagination is an essential ingredient in the recipe of every single human endeavour and every single breakthrough in the history of human civilization – and this will continue to be so for a long time to come – AI or no AI. Imagination is not the preserve of innovations and discoveries alone – it is also instrumental in the creation process of arts and sciences – from painting to literature to physical sciences. Pablo Picasso had the following to say about imagination: “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”. However, imagination is not just visualization, nor is it about having a vision and having the capability of articulating that vision. Imagination is much more than what our consciousness tells us as our consciousness is in constant dialogue with our minds which are always open to manipulation and control – self or otherwise. Imagination is something which comes from deep within. It is more in the realm of subliminal consciousness which one is not aware of most of the times. So, the more we discuss this, the more the questions. Does it mean that human beings cannot imagine on their own will and that then imagination is an automatic outcome of the activities of our mind which we cannot control in any manner. Is that why some people have more imaginative power than many others and then as Picasso says it is a function of our intelligence only. So, while we acknowledge that imagination helps us to do our work better, there is a need to know whether imagination is just another skill which can be learnt or developed, or it is something inherent in an individual – does the individual drive his imaginings or is it that the imaginative capacity of the individual drives him/her. Arthur Conan Doyle in The Sign of Four describes the situation of an individual high on imagination, very well. He has the following to say: “My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

The world of business has also long understood the importance of innovation and creativity in their enterprises. Progress is never made unless we look for answers to pertinent questions. The art of asking the right questions – which then elicits answers which takes into consideration the needs and desires of people – makes a lot of difference to the fortunes of companies over the long term. It is not about creating disruptions as disruptions are often a result of extrapolating the past into the future. Disruptions are often short-term as well. However, there is no doubt that disruptions often give firms the much-needed breathing space over competitors and can be financially worthwhile as well. Imagination, on the other hand enables enterprises to go beyond the present and the mundane. It captivates the consumers and keep them glued to the enterprises and its products. It is not everyday that a firm will come out with revolutionary products like a telephone or a computer – but when it does, the results are beyond any expectations. It changes the way people live and work and will never be the same again. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. says in Autocrat of the Breakfast Table “A man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions”. Simply put, this means that a consumer who has got habituated with mobile phones will not even think of going back to land phones. In fact, a large majority of the world’s population do not even understand how life was before TV or mobile phones.

Napoleon Hill brought forth the notion that there are two types of imagination. One of them is synthetic imagination and the other is creative imagination. Synthetic imagination is about taking recognized ideas, concepts etc. and then combining them in a new form. In 1999, Roos and Victor put forward their idea of three types of imagination and they were descriptive, creative and challenging. In business management, both synthetic and creative imagination are required. Creative imagination led us to new products and services and brings in the discontinuity required in organizations which then gets a fresh lease of life. Innovations like mobile phones and TV opens up a huge new range of possibilities and opportunities where existing firms have an outside chance of making it in those markets. It is usually new firms with a new work ethos and new perspectives who are able to dominate these new markets and product range. Every path breaking product throws up a whole new set of nimble fast-moving set of companies who begin to take the maximum possible advantage of the situation. These are the Fortune 500 companies of the future, and the time cycle is coming down faster than we had imagined earlier. This, however, by no means imply that synthetic imagination is not important. Just the opposite. Synthetic imagination is the bread and butter of the organizations. Creative imagination will produce results once in a blue moon. Synthetic imagination will keep the organizations running. For example, new methods of marketing. When consumers were getting tired of freebies and started to see through the manipulation and deception involved, marketers came out with the idea of joint marketing or joint promotions as it is more widely known. A particular detergent is very suitable for a particular type and brand of washing machines – consumers are told and many of them believe. This has produced solid results for many consumer goods marketers as consumers believed that the advise being given to them is genuine. Indian consumers also believe that using lemon in a detergent powder enhances the quality of the wash. Consumers or people can be made to believe all this postulates as no proof is required – only the use of imagination from both sides – the firm as well as the consumers. One of the most interesting and challenging form of marketing is to market to the children. The Barbie Dolls and G I Joe’s has fired up the imagination of children across generations around the world. While they are all about entertainment, the society has to be careful about the long-term effects such stereotypical images will have on the minds of the consumers (children). Both the companies became very profitable as their products became household names especially in the western countries. All of us understand and appreciate the role imagination plays in making these toys so popular. Research shows that children have more imaginative power compared to adults – for example, Disneyland or comic characters like Tintin and Captain Haddock in the comic strip. This can have many reasons but one plausible reason affecting us directly is what is commonly known as “dare to dream”. The grind of the modern daily life with its innumerable commitments and a long “to-do” list takes the time and inclination for imagination out of the minds of the adults. Imagination is more of a necessary evil and not a core activity for most adults and hence not encouraged – either by self or by others.

Now, there are eight modes of imagination. They are: effectuative imagination, intellectual or constructive imagination, imaginative fantasy, empathy, strategic imagination, emotional imagination, dreams, and memory reconstruction. Effectuative imagination is when our brain combines information and forms new concepts and ideas by establishing the synergies between all the information collected. Intellectual or constructive imagination is when we form hypothesis after collecting information from various areas and also trying to find meaning from the various issues in the various areas involved. Imaginative fantasy imagination is the process of creation of poetry, plays, and stories etc. Empathy imagination is when we try to understand the emotions of other persons from their point of view or reference. Strategic imagination is about the realm of possibilities – scenario building in our minds of the possibilities from current and future time periods. Emotional imagination is, as the name suggests, all about building emotional scenarios based on the emotional dispositions observed or manifested. Then, all of us are familiar with dreams. It is primarily the formation of images etc. in our unconscious minds when we are asleep. Memory reconstruction is access to and retrieval of memory of various things like events, experiences, people, and objects. Our brain plays a major role in our capacity to imagine. Scientists claim that the frontal cortex or the neocortex and the thalamus of the brain are responsible for many functions like consciousness, abstract thought, and imagination. This does not mean that all intelligent individuals are creative. However, all creative people are intelligent. Science has proved that there is a correlation between intelligence and creativity. Memory and imagination are also correlated. In fact, memory is often referred to as reproductive imagination. This is because memory takes the contents from earlier experiences and then reproduces them in exactly the same form and order – only the time dimension changes. Imagination also, in most cases, takes the contents from past experiences. However, the arrangement and presentation of these past experiences are made in a completely new order and form. So, unlike memory, the time dimension changes the format of the current experiences when compared to that of the past experiences. In case of memory, it remains constant.

It is obvious from these discussions that for imagination, memory is important and so imagination also must have access to and be able to retrieve past event and experiences. We can then say that imagination cannot function in a void or a vacuum – it requires the foundation of our past experiences and events already stored in our minds. Now if we agree that imagination drives our actions or behaviour, it is very important for marketers to get into the long-term memory of consumers who comprise their target segment. A tech-challenged consumer will keep on resisting the usage of modern gadgets until a member of the “innovators” succeeds in breaking his resistance and is able to push him for trial. If the experience of the trial is positive and gets into the long-term memory of that particular consumer, it becomes much easier for the marketer to allure the consumer to imagine using much more modern products. The current challenge, especially in developing countries, is to convert consumers from tech-challenged scenario to a tech-savvy consumer. Once marketers are able to connect the imagination of a consumer to his self-image which is embedded in the consumer’s memory, it will become much easier for the marketer to influence the behaviour and actions of the consumers in respect to their products and services at least. This is also another form of marketing where it is quite close to what ancient Indian scriptures talk about the Yoga and the meditation. It is ultimately all about mind control. However, there is a fundamental difference here. Influencing through the route of imagination is an external party trying to influence and control the minds of others or their current and potential consumers. Yoga on the other hand is all about self-control of our own minds. Here the concepts diverge and are moving in almost opposite pathways. Before we reach the capacity to control other’s minds, we must be aware of the potential high risk of the situation. So, without getting into the technology part, we can safely say that the tools that will be made available to marketers and manufacturers of goods and services will be much more potent in the coming years. However, consumer awareness also has to be brought in so that they fully understand how their own mental faculties will be used to serve the purpose of big business and their band of marketers. The purpose as understood today is the competition for the consumer’s mind space which will necessarily influence consumers to buy the products and services of a particular firm. Branding then will not be just about catching the attention of the consumer – it will try to guide the consumer throughout the entire process of his or her decision-making right up to the point of purchase. In addition to this, usage of big data and artificial intelligence will be able to pinpoint the target customer individually – who will then be subjected to replay his past experiences in a new form altogether – these images construed in the consumer’s mind will generate positive responses and actions towards a particular manufacturer or an individual brand or even a set of brands. It may then be possible for companies to come together in the marketplace and target consumers with a bundle of product or services which are very close to the imageries formed in the consumers mind through their imagination.

In the current situation, the competition is between the brands. That is what is keeping the firms busy – comparing and competing with other brands in the same product category. However, in the coming decades, the war will be more in-between product categories. Premium cars will then compete with premium apartments for the share of expenditure of consumers - and then even for the consumer’s attention. Many companies and brands have already started seeing the writing on the wall. So, for Coca-Cola India, water is a competitor. For Netflix, even sleep is a competitor. For Mercedes-Benz cars, investments made in financial instruments are major competitors. So, now we are not only talking about products and brands but are trying to get the entire personality and characteristics of the human being to participate in the process of making a purchase decision. In the early phases of the development of the modern man, imagination was the preserve of the consumers and a few forward-thinking entrepreneurs. There was this famous saying about Henry Ford. When asked why Ford Motor Company do not offer more choice of colours to the customers, Henry Ford replied that the customer can have any colour of his choice as long as it is black. This same Henry Ford, in another instance, was asked why he does not listen to the consumers more often. The same Henry Ford had then replied that had he listened to the customers, he would still be making 4-horse drawn carriages and not automobiles. It is exactly for this reason, that automobiles were born and then assembly lines were invented. It is the sheer imaginative power of a maverick genius that changed the world and the way people lived and travelled, forever. Now, we cannot even imagine what life would have been if this inventions were not made. The point however is that imagination does not only lead to new concepts or theories as critics would like to call it. The point is, in real life, execution of building or manufacturing of challenging products or services and even complicated events and/or projects - also require a lot of imaginative power. The challenge may come from architecture or engineering or even medical sciences, but the solution many a times has emerged from our vivid imagination. Centuries ago (1889-1881), the Britishers decided to install “toy-train” in Darjeeling – a very renowned hill-station nestled in the mighty Himalayas. While building the railway track, the lead engineer got stuck in the hills and was not able to push forward. He was very worried and one day while having breakfast, he shared this challenge with his wife. Upon hearing that he was unable to move forward, his wife immediately asked why he doesn’t move back. This idea immediately struck the engineer and hence the train track was laid in such a way that the train goes back for a few metres in a certain area and then again proceeds on its usual route. This is the way imagination solves challenges and deep problems also. The source of the imagination, in this case, was a lady who was not at all directly connected with the railway project. But it is her imagination which solved the problem which seemed so big and so difficult to the technocrats involved with the project at that point in time.

Imagination is very useful in communication, leadership, and many other areas including business management. Avis was the market leader in car hire business and Hertz was the number two. Hertz wanted to become number one and hence decided to come out with a new advertisement. In a freewheeling discussion, the account executive of the advertising firm asked the marketing manager of Hertz if they did anything which is strikingly different from Avis. The marketing manager could not find anything and added that since they were number two, they tried harder. The comment stuck and it went on to become one of the most famous ad lines of all time – “we are no 2 and hence, we try harder’. Imagination is a way of life in marketing communication and advertising. Imagination is also a very important trait in good leaders. In business management, very often organization structures are still very hierarchical. It is difficult for Indian business leaders to accept flat structures. The legacy of ‘command and control’ is still very prevalent in many types of business organizations. Now, in this kind of a structure, a leader is also a subordinate. So, many a times, the question arises in his mind as to which side is he really on. The typical dilemma is whether he is a representative of management to his subordinates or he is a representative of his subordinates to the management. Most leaders do not confront this dilemma. They just try to wriggle out of the situation by maintaining a status quo. There are other leadership styles also. Some managers adopt an anti-establishment posture and keep on fighting with the management for the benefit of his team, deservedly or otherwise. Some mangers do the opposite. They are avowed pro-establishment characters who will go on to implement everything that his management wants him to. The perception in this case among the subordinates is that their manager has “sold his soul”. The solution, at least theoretically, is very easy. As they say, actions speak much more than words. So, it is not about what you say so much, but what is it that has been achieved by your team for the organization and what have they got in return. Ultimately, most business organizations across the world are still in the give-and-take mode. When it is all about transactions, the managers need to be extra careful such that their reputation is not hampered. There will always be people who are nothing more than “slave-drivers” and there are managers who are too soft. The balancing act here is very important for an optimum performance. No subordinate will come to his manager and clearly articulate what he or they really want – probably, they themselves may not know it accurately. So, the manager has to use a lot of imagination to keep his team motivated as well as to ensure that the team gets a fair return on their capabilities and their efforts which produced results. Imagination is also very useful in avoiding conflicts within the team. The images of a superordinate goal, if properly evoked in the minds of the individual team members, does go a long way in ensuring a high degree of commitment from the team collectively.        

Over the entire modern era, the world has moved in a direction where human beings and machines are becoming substitute products. It may have been the outcome of what we call progress, but ignoring some of the special characteristics of the living, breathing human being will be a big mistake in the long run. Ultimately, business must be useful to society. The mankind is now just watching the long parade of technological progress seemingly under nobody’s control. While it is difficult to say whether we are building a Frankenstein, but one thing is sure that technology also needs to be used in a way that benefits society. The problem of the world today is the unequal growth and development in various parts of the world. The developed world benefits a lot from technological development and at this point in time, it does not seem to be sincerely interested in controlling and guiding it. May be they have time in their hands and hence their control measures may come in at a later date. However, the real challenge is with the developing countries. At this point in the life cycle, technological developments will only be good for the countries and their societies. However, it is also creating two distinct set of societies. The educated and technologically savvy consumer is already at par with the standards of the developed countries, but the poorer sections of the society are lagging behind and this lag is continuously increasing. The developing countries will have to address these issues some time or the other – the sooner the better. This is because in another decade’s time, digitisation will be a basic requirement to function in the society and then this transition from traditional to modern will also have its repercussions until and unless well managed by the government and its agencies primarily. All around the world including the developed countries, there is a growing demand for more participation by the government in the lives of people. Somehow, people still believe that elected governments are better at understanding their needs and demands much more than the private sector. There was a distinct period when people, especially in the developed countries, thought that their governments are up to no good and that privatisation is the answer to these problems. However, now people are completely disillusioned with the private sector, the primary reason for which is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. The much-touted “trickle-down effect” has not happened and people are finding themselves at the receiving end of a very exploitative situation. A major part of the world population does not seem to have any more hope of redeeming their situation. Some even go to the extent of calling it a “modern slavery”. While this may be an extreme stance, the need for a new system is becoming very obvious. It is human nature that most of us do not want to share the wealth earned through their hard work (there are many exceptions in world history). This is also because the rich in unable to or are not willing to imagine a situation where the society becomes more egalitarian and every member of the society gets a fair return on his fruits of labour. It has always been difficult for human beings to believe or even imagine that you yourself will gain the most if you share it with the other sections of the society. You will be much better off if everybody in the system is much better off - to believe and imagine that makes the society a much better place to live in. The resistance comes from within as most of us cannot get ourselves to imagine a situation where this might happen. In fact, in most cases, the imagination gives way to the fear that I will lose my position or status in society if everybody is truly above a certain benchmark. The private sector with its greed and rapaciousness is just despised by the comparatively poorer part of the economy. The old logic that you get what you deserve does not hold good any more because the information asymmetry plays out its role in the perceptions and minds of every individual today. The solution may be a kind of completing the cycle. The government plays a much wider role in the affairs of the society and the country and the role of private sector is minimised. The trend is to privatise everything which is an absolutely untenable proposition especially from the economic development point of view. We have to turn a semi-circle and put the affairs of men in the hands of the government with a curtailed role for the private sector. What concepts and theories held good during the 18^th and the 19^th century just does not hold good today. There is enough wealth in this world and there is no urgent need to accelerate the generation of wealth. It can happen at a much more leisurely pace. What is important to imagine is a very efficient government which has service (customer service, if you will) as its primary objective – and uplifting the human existence as its vision. This vision must be broken down into goals like health and education for all etc. When imagining a goal which is totally theoretical is so difficult, just imagine how difficult will be the actions for executing this goals in real life situations. This is especially so when countries are so very varied and even areas within the same country are quite different from each other. However, an efficient and productive government with open and transparent systems can do wonders for the country. The idea is not to remove the private sector but make the private sector a partner in the activities of the government such that the vision is accomplished with the upliftment of the society and its members above a certain threshold.

Bertolt Brecht, the 20^th century German playwright created the concept of “epic theatre” and also postulated about “dialectical materialism”. The main thought process of Brecht was that he did not want his spectators to get emotionally attached with the characters or events on the stage. Instead, he believed that the spectators should take a critical view of the whatever is happening on stage at any given point in time and should do what he called “rational self-reflection”. This is a very critical aspect of the ability of cognition of human beings. Bertolt Brecht practised the “alienation effect” which means that the “familiar contents are presented in an unfamiliar way to get a new effect so that the audience does not empathise with the story of a drama, and can think profoundly about the drama.” This is also known as the “distancing effect”. This is a very important concept and has been widely used in various art forms as well as the hard sciences. Brecht’s alienation or distancing effect has been used in other modernist innovations like “strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Eisenstein’s evolution of a constructive montage in the cinema, and Picasso’s introduction of cubist collage in the visual arts”. In business management as well as in life also, the alienation or the distancing effect plays a major role in arriving at correct decisions. When we are in the midst of an event or an experience, our clarity is either blurred or biased. When we remove ourselves from the situation and take a dispassionate view of the whole thing, we get much more clarity and then we are able to take unbiased decisions without prejudice. That is the role Lord Krishna played for the Pandeva’s in Mahabharata. This approach takes one away from the thick of things and enables him to imagine alternative situations to the problem at hand and sometimes provides clarity of what the situation may become when the event is over. So, present alternatives as well as future scenarios may be simulated in our consciousness which will invariably lead to better decisions. Long back in the end of 1980’s, a management trainee of a large consumer company, just after completing his internship, was posted to Guwahati as in-charge of North-Eastern region of India. The Vice-President who sent him there also started his career from Guwahati and NE. However, the situation had completely changed in the intervening twenty years. In 1990, NE was in turmoil and violence were a part of everyday life. The VP, being an excellent human being, understood this and came visiting the Guwahati branch immediately after. He saw and understood and went back happy with the role the MT was playing in guiding the branch in those turbulent times. As luck would have it, the VP was shifted to another division and the VP of that loss-making division was brought in. The MT disliked this new VP from his earlier interactions – however, he carried on as his usual self. This new VP had never visited Guwahati and could not even imagine what the situation was like in NE at that time. He even refused to give any concession or complements to the team in Guwahati – only criticisms. Naturally the motivation started sliding and then after a year of good performance, the figures became very average in the second year. The VP put the entire blame on the MT (then executive) and went to the extent of blocking his promotion when all his batchmates were promoted. This executive moved on and got a good job while the VP was stuck there for the rest of his life. The curses and the invectives he received from the entire batch (behind his back) for this action of his could not have done him any good for the rest of his life. This type of incidents shows that some people however high and mighty they might be, just do not have the capacity to imagine and use it for the good of others. They only know that because of their thick skin they can take any thing and can go through anything irrespective of the consequences in their own lives and careers.  

Now, why is imagination important in the lives of corporate executives? This is important because it is crucial to understand other people in the organization as well as to understand and appreciate any other varied activity like the launch of a new product. According to many experts, imagination is the fundamental requirement for becoming a good marketer. It makes a lot of difference to fortunes of large corporates also. When desk top computers were making an entry into the markets, IBM was busy selling mainframes only and had no intention of coming into the desk top business. When the Chairman Watson was asked about this decision he had promptly replied – ‘I know how many desk tops are going to be sold in this world, just two’. As the saying goes - The seeds of tomorrows failure are in today’s success. So, IBM could not even imagine a world with desk tops sitting on every work and study desk of the world, and paid a heavy price for that. One of the largest companies of the world and the bluest of the blue chips had to come back from the brink of bankruptcy. Xerox was also offered a chance to produce computers which it ignored. Then it also faced bankruptcy and then came back on a much reduced scale. The stories of Eastman Kodak and many other Fortune 100 companies of the world are well known. The story of the computers is all about imagination. When Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were imagining the world to be run by desk tops and laptops, IBM refused to see the impending change and buried its head in the sand like an ostrich – refusing to imagine and accept that the world is an ever changing place. It is a natural instinct of human beings to cling to its glorious past and hope that everything will keep going on – the future is only an extrapolation of the past. So, in business management, imagining plays a crucial role wherein it allows a company to have the luxury of time and enables large corporates to manoeuvre into a lot of marketspace. In earlier generations, even individuals did not prepare for their old age and hence some of them faced a lot of difficulties during that age. In current generations, individuals learnt their lessons from the past and hence are much better prepared when they actually become old. Many of us are caught off-guard when the intervening 3/4 decades just pass off in a jiffy. While we are still surprised when we become old, this generation is better prepared physically and economically when the time comes. While thinking of old age when we are in our mid-thirties is slightly ludicrous, but it is a very practical way of approaching a challenge. The real challenge is making our minds to believe that yes, one day, we all will also become old and live life according to what we have learnt from our seniors when we were still young. Individuals who are better prepared will continue to lead healthy and happy lives, whereas many others may not. Similarly, corporates also behave the same way. In their life cycle, companies will flourish along with their products and services – but what really matters is how the firms are able to extend their growth and maturity periods over a longer period of time. What is also crucial is to prepare off shoots of their current products and services which will succeed the current products over a certain long-range. Something like what is done as succession planning of people in the organization. Consumer products will get substituted faster and faze in and out faster, while utilities may be able to serve their customers for a longer period of time.

Imagination or lack of it has come back time and time again to haunt the human civilization. Imagination has driven the human race forward in almost every field one can think of – especially in science as well as arts and sports. Imagination has also made a lot of difference in the political sphere. Through the ages, countries have come out of oppression and cruel domination to the modern-da.y democratic systems. There is no doubt that people in democratic countries enjoy more freedom and have full recourse to defend themselves from any other form of oppression as the rule of law has been established firmly in all these countries. Similarly, the human civilization has moved on from feudal systems to communism to socialism to varied forms of capitalism. However, it is an acknowledged fact that still there are many countries in the world who are run by autocrats or dictators – again in various forms. A few things, however, has not changed. Religious bigotry has remained in. most areas and there seems to be no end to people fighting with each other. In these cases, people or countries do not seem to learn from previous mistakes. Someone quoted a figure saying that in more than 3000 years of recorded history, there have been only around 250 years in which there were no major wars. If this is the case, then shall we to conclude that imagination is just another form of pipe-dream with no practical significance. Our experience in science and arts do not say that. Everywhere we have progressed – we are now starting commercial flights to the moon. Yet, we are not safe in our homes. Anything may happen anytime – a single act of aggression can bring in a catastrophe for the human race. It is surprising that people who have witnessed the horrors of war over and over again commit the same error time and time again. This is a case of imagination gone wrong or imagination being guided in the wrong direction. Instead of education, health, and prosperity for all, we want to become the ‘all powerful monarch’ who will rule the world based on their military might subjugating people through sheer use of fear. The objective of a peaceful world has been immortalised by John Lennon in his famous song “Imagine” – “Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too”. Then again – “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man”. Every individual in the world wants it that way – the peaceful way – however, it is common knowledge now that some collectives do not want it that way. When Bengal was partitioned as a condition for Independence – can we imagine what was in the imagination of the political leaders then? Did they really imagine a very peaceful transition where all the people on both sides of the boundary will just follow non-violence? A small strip of land called West-Bengal has the second highest population density among all the large states of India. From a prosperous state, the leading state in the country, it was overnight reduced to a burning cauldron – an inferno - a breathing, living hell that millions of people were thrown into through no fault of theirs! Shall we not call that a genocide? In a country which was formed on the basis of satisfying the ambitions of a certain set of people, throwing millions to the marauders which continued till Bangladesh was formed with our intervention – there will be the roll of dice – someday. It is easier to imagine Bengal regaining its past glory than to write it off with disdain and throw it to a corner of the country. Resurrection will be there and then it will be stunning – someday. The sacrifice of one generation – their lives and the torturous lives of their loved ones – will never ever go in vain. The memories will be there and it will keep haunting the generations to come. Right now it is the march of a defeated army through the main roads of memory – one day there will be the amalgamation of memories with imagination and that will be the day Bengal will stand on its own feet once again.  

The mirror does not lie. When you stand in front of the mirror – what do you see? Is it a true reflection or is it that the mirror image hides more than it reveals! However, the mirror is a useful instrument which, when mixed with imagination, can be used for self-motivation. At a young age, the mirror gives you the power to imagine – where are you now and where do you want to be. It is an opportunity for unbridled imagination which when mixed with down to earth practicality will guide us to our goals. At an advanced age when one is much more mature, the time arrives to take stock of your life. Have I achieved my goals or have I gone off in a trajectory I myself never contemplated. Are you good with where you have reached or some more things need to be done. The mirror keeps you on your toes – the objectives and goals of life has to be achieved, no matter what. Every single day of your life will be dedicated towards that goal with focus and concentration – the goals has to be achieved, whatever it takes. One senior executive had once warned a junior that a day will come when the junior will stand in front of the mirror and see the senior. What the senior was trying to advise the junior is that he should chart out his own journey and not copy anybody else. Mirror images are the bane of modern society. This is like the assembly line. Everybody goes through the same education system and everybody wants the same things in life – a posh flat, a premium car – all the wealth and everything that money can buy in the world. So, when the active journey is over, we are a large group of cantankerous old men and women completely disillusioned with what life has to offer. Very simply put, the question at that point is whether this is all there is to it and this is what we spend our entire lives running after! The McDonaldisation of our lives – the standardisation and the sameness – stifles the urge to try out new things and may be different journey paths for our lives. The question of security which includes economic security weighs so heavily on us that it prevents us from diverging from our peer group behaviour. The system is ensuring that nobody dares to think, to imagine in a different way. This is very crucial in a developing country like us. This is why the developed countries are able to steal a march over us as far as innovation, be it business or technology or anything else, is concerned. We all have understood very well by now that the economic engine in the 21^st century and henceforth will be driven by innovation. A society becomes innovative only when its citizens are willing to experiment with their lives – as they say, the risks taken. Safety nets for failure also is critical at this stage.

The little things that we have in life, the little possessions - are all meant to be wished away, all meant to be given away. The biggest challenge in life for individuals is that when everything is lost and gone, a lot of things still remain. The cranes are still flying but Stefan will never return home again. The birds fly above us all the time but nobody knows when they die and where they die. It’s rare to see a dead bird – we only see them being born. Individuals go through different phases of their lives – each phase brings along with it a new set of images which emanates from the power of their individual imagination. It is difficult to guide a large and diverse country to imagine collectively. The freedom of the bird is also a routine. What happens in the short-term is almost never true in the long-term. The continuous struggle between the spiritual forces and the physical world is the destiny of mankind. This struggle is what purifies our thought processes and forces individuals to go beyond the mind and the heart – understanding the soul, reaching the super conscious stage. One does not know if this is ‘nirvana’, but it is something close to our imagination of what our soul is. It is not possible to attain this stage in the normal humdrum of everyday life. At a certain point in the life of all individuals comes an inflexion point where one is unsure of the path ahead. According to extant wisdom, purification of the soul is possible either by submitting yourself completely to the Supreme, or dedicate yourself to the service of mankind. Not many people in the world knows the answer. It is a matter of individual belief that one has to go by. The birds are still flying and they will continue till the end of the Universe. The quest for true freedom – the liberation of the mind, body, and soul will also continue. Some wishes are never fulfilled, and it is better this way. The solution is the key to the universe, the key to the bountiful ‘ananda’. Sometimes it is good to lose everything – you lose everything you cherish, everything you thought is important – and then from the ashes, the phoenix rises, you come out of it a new man, a man whose priorities, attitudes, and goals are completely different. The new perspective makes you imagine a new individual and possibly a new world order. Great catastrophise, manmade or natural, has purified the human race over the ages and guided him to an entire new direction. They surely have an impact on the lives and times of human civilization, but history teaches us that just like good things keep happening, disasters will also keep on testing the resilience of individuals as well as the human race. Imagining a very peaceful life for the world may seem like a pipe dream, imagining a poverty free world may also be a pipe dream – but what is attainable is a large part of the world or the entire world coming together for a unified battle against the scourges of humanity. At the very least, the cost of survival for a large majority of the human race can be brought down considerably. This is not just another declaration of Universal Human Rights, but a call for actually implementing some programmes which can ameliorate the pains of a large part of the populace – the pains we inflict on them, the pains that they have to go through for ensuring the smooth and efficient running of our systems, mostly borne out of our habits and egos.

A quote from The Life of Sri Aurobindo by A. B. Purani may not be impertinent here. Sri Aurobindo writes in 1920: “I came to Pondicherry in order to have freedom and tranquillity for a fixed object having nothing to do with present politics – in which I have taken no direct part since my coming here, though what I could do for the country in my own way I have constantly done, - and until it is accomplished , it is not possible for me to resume any kind of public activity”. Sri Aurobindo goes on to add: “I do not at all look down on politics or political action or consider I have got above them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and intention of political activity would differ considerably from anything now current in the field. I entered into political action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue”.      

According to Aristotle, imagination is “that in virtue of which an image occurs in us”. However, Aristotle insisted on differentiating imagination from perception and mind (or belief). So, Aristotle is of the opinion that “imagination is a faculty in humans and most other animals which produces, stores, and recalls the images used in a variety of cognitive activities, including those which motivate and guide action”. This argument off course does not pass master in totality, in the light of current thinking on the human faculty of imagination.

The role of imagination has been explored in as many diverse fields as mindreading, pretence, creating and engaging with different types of artworks, in theoretical thought experiments as well as practical decision making. So, it is obvious that that there is no one component of the mind for all the different variety of roles that imagination plays in diverse areas of theory as well as practice. Consequently, there are many taxonomies of imagination available and in vogue currently. One that has been proposed by Walton talks about spontaneous and deliberate imagining. This becomes very interesting when applied to present day marketing. Spontaneous imagining is something which is beyond our control, and we still do not have a clear idea where it emanated from. Many experts are of the opinion that it is only an extension of our consciousness. Be that as it may, the core needs of an individual consumer come from this spontaneity and manufacturers and marketeers has to be ready for an almost spontaneous response. This is a difficult process initially as it involves understanding the minds of the consumers. However, experience over a period of time shows that if an organization is truly customer-centric, then this becomes possible. This is primarily because spontaneous imagination very often manifests itself in dreams and fantasies of individuals. If it is possible to decode what a particular set or category of people is dreaming of, we have the master plan for the road ahead especially in terms of the product offerings required. This is the genesis of all product innovations – products which have changed the way people live and feel their world – for example, TV, Mobile phones etc. Satellite TV has brought the world to our drawing rooms and the result is an unprecedented boom in national as well as international tourist travel. From spontaneous imagining, this phenomenon may as well spill over to deliberate imagining. Many tourists from India – after visiting a developed country – go through a significant change in their attitudes, mindset, and aspiration. So, deliberate imagining may depend on the exposure level of the consumer and hence, the more the consumer is exposed to better products and services, the more their aspiration for better value. The difficult part to handle is that the aspiration level does not restrict itself to products and services alone but encompasses the full life of the consumer – the standard of living as well as the quality of life. It is comparatively easy to track deliberate imagining. The passenger on an international flight from Mumbai to London may imagine that the journey is taking only a couple of hours unlike the normal 8/9 hours that it takes. Organizations understand and appreciate the message and then they immerse themselves in product innovations which will help fulfil the deliberate imaginings of the consumer. The innovation may take a very long time but when that happens, it brings in a paradigmatic difference in the way the human world lives and travels. It is not as difficult as it sounds as unlike spontaneous imagining, deliberate imagining is well articulated by the consumers and can be captured by the organization at any given point in time. Then distinction is made between occurrent and non-occurrent imaginings. While marketeers may not pay much attention to non-occurrent imaginings, occurrent imaginings are of great significance to all marketeers. If the market researcher is able to get in touch with the target consumer at this stage, s/he may be sitting on a goldmine. This occurrent imaginings of the consumer will give the researcher the clue about the latent needs of the consumer and what is it that s/he really needs and wants – the absolute priorities. Another distinction that is made is between social and solitary imaginings. This is very important for marketing communication – even for corporate communication and brand building. When imaginings are social, the need for belonging or the need for appreciation by the social group is very high for the individual consumer. So, communication including advertising and all other BTL activities has to be seen in the context of group functioning. Another aspect that marketeers need to be conscious of is the extent to which the social group of the consumer influences his or her behaviour mainly in terms of purchase or buying decisions. Most brands try to influence social groups through high profile individuals normally known as brand ambassadors. What brands normally traditionally overlook is the influence of the target social group on the individual. This may be difficult as it is difficult to measure and understand fully. However, modern sophisticated techniques of focus groups and other qualitative research methods should be able to solve this challenge. The inherent question also is of financial viability. It is always financially lucrative when one influences many – but many influencing few may not look so attractive in consumer marketing. However, many influencing few may be of big impact and value in a B2B scenario particularly in situations of concept selling. Some decades back, a medium size stadium was being built by Navy in Bombay. The customer was looking for an appropriate seating system and one company making moulded plastic chairs was very eager to get the order. The purchase team of Navy was interested but had some doubts in their minds. So, the company invited several satisfied customers from all over the country to Bombay and made them to meet up with the top brass of Navy in Bombay. When all the customers unequivocally praised the installations at various places in the country, the Navy purchase team was very satisfied. In spite of all this, Navy was dilly dallying with the final purchase order. The reason was that all they had was some verbal assurances from some satisfied customers. So, to turn the imagination into reality, the company invited the purchase team of Navy to visit some of their major installations in Bombay, Delhi, and Kolkata. Particular importance was given to installations pertaining to the defence forces. Once that happened, the Navy purchase team did not have an iota of doubt in their minds about the suitability of the company’s products for their stadium in Bombay. The very concept that seats made out of plastic can be durable enough for a stadium was difficult to believe for many and of course required convincing through demonstration. When the cycle of social imagination was reinforced by various similar installations at different parts of the country, the last remnants of the customers hesitation was removed from their minds. This incident can be explained from various perspectives and there is no doubt that each component had a role to play in securing this prestigious order from the Navy. However, collective always has and will continue to have an upper hand over the individual. So, fulfilling social imaginations is the responsibility of marketing and business along with other stakeholders – and in the long run it is very lucrative in terms of returns over investments. It is not only true for mass products, but also holds good for premium products. It can be argued, though there is no concrete proof, that solitary imaginings are the domain of luxury items only and is not at all connected with products of mass consumption. Similarly, solitary imagining can be the foundation of the STP concept. Social imagination may also be claimed to be the foundation of STP. However, there are differences. In the concept of STP, segmentation is done on the basis of demographic and psychographic variables. Imagination, both social as well as solitary, does not lend itself to any form of generalizations like segmentation. Segmentation so far is primarily based on the physical factors, and it also tries to understand a group of individuals through their psychographic profiles. This is not at all an accurate or precise way of understanding customers. Understanding consumers through their imaginations will give the marketeer a much more in-depth understanding of the minds of their consumers. The concept of mass customization has come near the concept of solitary imaginings. This is because the customer is allowed by the manufacturer to participate in the manufacture of the product he wants. However, this also has limitations since it does not start from ground zero. Even in case of mass customization, the customer is very limited in his choice and can modify a little bit on the main platform. So, every product development is like a greenfield project which tries to give shape to and bring to reality the imaginings of the consumers. A very good example of this is the mobile phone. Every consumer or every individual wanted to become free from the tyranny of the land lines or fixed line phones. It was not only about efficiencies, but also about the entire concept. People wanted to be free – to be able to communicate whenever and wherever they wanted to. The mobile phones gave them this liberty they were pining for. A very large number of consumers across the world had imagined a modern tool like the mobile phone and how life would be if one had such a device in his hands. So, when it became a reality and mobile phones were made available to the consumers, the demand went through the roof. The number of mobile phones in use in India is close to one billion now – a fantastic number. This is marketing at its best – the conversion of needs and wants as articulated in the imaginings of the potential consumers to reality in the form of products and/or services that fulfils these needs and wants.

Another taxonomy of imagination is imagining from the outside versus imagining from the inside. An executive may imagine himself to be Andrew Carnegie or Rockefeller. If it is just about building up a scenario where in he visualizes himself as Rockefeller, then it is imagining from the outside. This phenomenon can be used in marketing as well. A consumer in India may visualize or imagine himself as Marlon Brando when he wears a very premium shirt of Arrow or Louis Phillippe. A Lux user imagines herself as a popular movie star when she sees popular movie stars endorsing the brand. There are possibilities of taking the consumer to a make-believe world by cleverly using mnemonics in the marketing communication that helps consumers imagine scenarios where he or she becomes some other well-known person, especially a celebrity. So, imagining from the outside is something all of us engage in from time to time and it is not difficult to harness this aspect of human or consumer behaviour for commercial purposes – especially through clever use of marketing communication. Imagining from the inside is a far more difficult and complicated area. So, if one person imagines himself to be Rockefeller from the inside, he cannot limit himself to building scenarios only. He has to have the perspective of Rockefeller as well. The first thing that comes to mind is that the person must then know how Rockefeller thought or acted or even what his motivations for action were. This is a major roadblock – and, perhaps, it is better this way. Many a time one wants to know why it is not really possible to “get into the shoes of the other person”. A movie fan wants to become the movie star he adores – then is it possible for him to become that movie star for a day – or for a much longer time period. Absurd though it might sound, why is it not possible to become exactly like some other person he or she adores. It is not just about reading the minds of other people and it is also much more than understanding the thought processes of another person. The complete perspective which flows from our consciousness and our very existence makes each one of us so very different from each other. The reverse process of one person becoming exactly like another person in totality sounds totally impossible at this stage of the human development. So, imagining from the inside quite obviously has its limitations. However, it will be of great advantage to marketeers even if they are able to decode the different perspectives of their consumer segments. This will be of help not only to marketing, but also for various other aspects of our overall lives. It is intriguing to think of a scenario where Einstein became Rockefeller and vice versa. It comes from the simple child like curiosity of one person trying to understand another person completely. A class five student wanting to understand her classmate and friend completely – wanting to swap their lives at least for a limited period of time. This is not about time travel and does not have anything to do with the time-space coordinates. So, suffice it to say at this point in time, imagining from the inside just involves trying hard to get the thought processes and perspectives of that target person. If marketing is able to do just that for its target segments and consumers, that should be of immense benefit to them. One global enterprise talk about ‘insights from curiosity’. This is where we are today. The extension should be the imaginings of consumers – just understanding behavioural patterns will not be sufficient. This will make the difference between incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation (perhaps even an invention or a discovery).

Creative imagination is a term often used and is particularly useful in arts like painting, sculpture, and literature etc. However, now the hard sciences are also finding it very useful. Creative imagination, which some experts has defined as combining ideas in unexpected and unconventional ways, are proving to be very useful in all aspects of life. In business management and specifically marketing, creativity is of the essence now. The marketeer has to be not only curious for consumer insights but must also figure out creative ways of drawing out the consumer for free and frank discussions which will give the marketeers insights into the consumer’s minds. It does not end there, and the marketeers has to use their own creative imagination in order to reach out to the potential consumers. The marketeer today cannot be content with sending marketing communication messages including advertisements to the target consumers. The marketeer has to involve and engage the consumer with the brand. The consumer like in other areas of life has to find meaning for himself by engaging with the brand. It is not about utility anymore – the consumer has to respect the brand and, if possible, the marketeer has to gently guide the consumer to fall in love with the brand. Only this will ensure the sustainability of brands in the long term. So, creative imagination has to be utilized in every aspect of the product and/or service – from product development which includes design and features, to pricing and of course promotion. Sales and Distribution also demands a lot of creative imagination nowadays and is also being used as a promotional tool simultaneously. Gone are the days when distribution was guided just by efficiency – coverage of targeted retailers etc. Once an executive from India was taking a stroll along the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Suddenly a well-dressed young man emerged from one of the side lanes and invited him to take a test drive on a Ferrari car. The young man explained that this is being done directly from the company and no assurance of future purchase or any other condition was required by the company. The executive from India was put on an imagination trip where he could see himself driving a Ferrari on Champs-Elysees. This was really top-class marketing. The image of that Ferrari will be there forever in the mind–image of the executive and there will be a little bit of very positive WOM as well. From creative imagination comes recreative imagination. Recreative imagination is understood to be the ‘ability to experience or think about the world from a perspective different from the one that experience presents’. Here, the world can be interpreted not as the physical planet we think about, but the world of the people individually or collectively. In this definition, the world of a teacher staying in New York will be completely different from the world of the executive in Kolkata. We as individual human beings understand, enjoy, and occupy different worlds – physically as well as in our minds. Surprisingly, every human being also at some point in their lives ask the question – what if. This means, the individual plays out alternate scenarios in his mind and this then is the recreative imagination of his world. Many Indians recreate scenarios in their minds like what it would be like if India were to become a developed country soon enough. Consumers of toothpaste would like to recreate images of how good life will be if all the claims of the toothpaste manufacturers come true and the consumer becomes free of any teeth related problems. So, it is beneficial to marketeers if they can conjure up visuals or images of a very positive scenario where in the consumer looks at his world and the world looks at him in a much brighter frame. When the individual worlds of individual consumers change in a positive direction for a particular brand, the brand ends up winning the battle for the mindshare as well as the share of the wallet of the consumers. Having said this, marketeers must also remember that it is ultimately the product – the satisfaction or happiness that consumers derive from using the product – which will determine their success/failure. It is not only about imagery but also content/value. The core driver is imagination.

There are two other concepts associated with imagining. One is called mirroring and the other is called quarantining. Mirroring means that if there is a gap in a make-believe situation from the reality, then the gaps will be filled by how it is actually in reality. Principles of Generation also guides this phenomenon as it also does in the field of arts. It is generally acknowledged that prompts or props guide human minds towards particular imaginings. Quarantining means the object will not always act in real life according to his or her imaginings. Anyone may imagine that he is the richest man in the world, but he will not be able to or will not act in real life like the richest man in the world. Marketeers are often called dream merchants, but they need to be careful about this epithet. Looking at these principles it is clear that marketeers should not claim what it cannot deliver. Then their entire investment in communication will go down the drain. The brand image will also come down over a period of time.

In the end, it is important to know the differences between various attributes that come close and are often confused with imagination. One of them is belief and one must be aware of the differences between imagination and belief. Belief aims at truth while imagination do not. When we believe something, we generally assume it to be true. One can imagine that the room is on fire, but if it is not true – then the person will not believe it. Another important difference is that belief will mostly lead to actions while imagination may not. If one believes that the room is on fire, he will try to do something about it. However, if one is imagining that the room is on fire, he will not even try to do anything about it. Another difference is the connection to emotions. If the person believes that the room is on fire, he will be genuinely afraid. However, if he is imagining that the room is on fire, he will neither be afraid nor anxious or worried. Earlier it was thought that imagining requires mental Imagery. However, later on it was realized that not all imaginings require mental imagery. Imagining that invokes mental imagery Is very close to perception and may sometimes directly lead to action. So, marketeers will do well to remember that image is not a necessary requirement or element of imaginings. Imaginings and memory, though different, exhibit certain similarities. To an extent, both invokes imagery and hence involves perception. Another interesting commonality between memory and imagination is that ‘both typically concern what is not presently the case’. The interesting part of this discussion is the phenomenon of “mental time travel” – remembering the past and imagining the future. Neuroscientists have found that the two psychological processes of remembering the past and imagining the future utilize the same neural network.

Imagination plays a key role in creativity. Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) considers geniuses of the art world as ultimate examples of creativity. According to him, when imagination is used in these areas, free play happens, and the outcomes and the processes are beyond the comprehension of the subject himself or herself. This is imagination without any constraints, and it produces outputs which are much beyond the extant concepts. Modern day philosophers have added other areas to arts – “science, craft, business, technology, organizational life and everyday activities”. Contemporary philosophers consider the creative processes of ordinary people in addition to the geniuses. According to some experts, what makes imagination suitable for creative processes are that it does not aim at truth and is not connected to action. So, imagination is a very important catalyst for creative thinking which is fast becoming an essential ingredient to succeed in the modern business world.