The Imagination Engine: Designing Futures Worth Building [Video Interview]
# Digital Transformation
# Digital Twin
# Digital Twin & Simulation
# Ecosystem & Collaboration
# Horizons
# Innovation
How reframing the role of imagination can help engineers and innovators move from incremental change to transformative impact.
Bill Johnston
What if the biggest limitation to innovation isn't technical capability, but our failure to imagine boldly enough?
In an exclusive interview for the Siemens Xcelerator Community, David Erhard and Bill Johnston speak with Ed Finn, founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, to discuss why imagination is essential to solving complex challenges and how organizations can learn to build their capacity for it.
Key ideas from the conversation are highlighted below. Be sure to check out the video at the bottom of the post for the full conversation.
The Imagination Gap
A recurring theme throughout the discussion is that Ed believes society is suffering from a unique crisis: it's not that we lack imagination, it's that we are stuck using our imaginative powers to reinforce what already exists.
"I think there is a crisis of imagination, but it's not that people don't know how to imagine things... it's that we invest so much of our energy into imagining the world as it's the status quo, and we say, 'that's impossible! You can't do that.' And we self-censor."
Your Imagination Is a Muscle, Not Magic
Forget the myth that imagination is just for artists or that you either "have it or you don't." Finn argues that imagination is more like physical fitness, in that it requires deliberate practice and can atrophy without use.
"Imagination is a social capability. It emerges from groups of people coming together with shared stories, shared mythologies, shared ideas, and through conversation, through collaboration, coming up with ways that the world could be different."
The Power of "Feeling the Future"
One of Finn's most powerful insights is that effective innovation requires not just thinking about the future, but inhabiting it and "feeling it" in your imagination. This is why science fiction is such a powerful tool. It doesn't just introduce new technologies, it explores how people live with them - in essence, world-building within your imagination. When we add human stories to our planning, something crucial happens:
"Once you have a person in the future, you know that person has a job, but maybe they also have a family, they have other concerns, right? They have a world that they live in... If you only focus on one technical problem... you might introduce fragility or unexpected failure states because you weren't accounting for all of these other human factors."
Technologies as "Imagination Amplifiers"
Finn sees our modern digital tools—simulations, AI, digital models—as powerful aids to imagination:
"You are literally rehearsing for the future, and you're designing this environment in which you can rehearse different possible futures."
The key is using these tools not just for optimization (notice a recurring theme?), but for exploration. They become "mental holodecks" where we can test not just technical performance but human experience, social dynamics, and unexpected emergences.
A 15-Minute Workshop That Could Change Your Next Project
During the conversation, David asked Ed for an example of a simple and accessible exercise Xcelerator Community Member's could use with their teams. Ed described a "Three Hops to the Future" exercise, a simple tool anyone could use in their next team meeting:
The Three Hops Exercise
Step 1: Define Your Victory (10-15 years out) What does total success look like? Moving beyond incremental improvement to real transformation. Think about:
What would make your current challenges obsolete?
What would fundamentally change how your industry operates?
What impact would you want to be remembered for?
Step 2: Find the Turning Point (5-7 years out) What milestone proves you're on the right track? This isn't about technology specs, it's about an indicator of systemic change. What would have to be different about how we work, design, build, or think?
Step 3: Identify Tomorrow's First Step What's the smallest action that starts this journey? This brings the exercise back to earth—what can you actually do this quarter that points toward transformation, not just optimization?
The Challenge: Share Your Victory Condition
The conversation with Ed Finn reminds us that imagination is fundamentally social. It grows through sharing and collaboration. Frankly, it underscores one of the main reasons we started this community. So here's our challenge to the Siemens Xcelerator Community:
Run the Three Hops exercise with your team. What "victory condition" did you imagine? Share it in the comments below.
Let's use our technical capabilities not just to perfect what is, but to prototype what could be.
Resources to Explore Further:
Center for Science and the Imagination:csi.asu.edu
![The Imagination Engine: Designing Futures Worth Building [Video Interview]](https://cdn.gradual.com/images/https://d2xo500swnpgl1.cloudfront.net/uploads/xcelerator/TL-Interview-cover-Ed2-e6ae0474-0bea-4076-8491-c9b361ba7220-1760729410170.jpeg?fit=scale-down&width=1200)
