The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy

by Alexander Manu, David Dunne, Chris Matthews

Companies constantly present technological developments-new materials, new mechanisms, and new ways to enhance existing products and services. Yet these seldom lead to truly new ideas. Why? Humans are all born with creative instincts, but in the interest of efficient and predictable productivity, institutions such as schools and businesses routinely hinder those impulses. The most innovative products and services, author Alexander Manu argues, arise out of the behaviors of play--the ability to imagine, without limits, the question "What if…?"

Manu's engaging and inspiring book offers companies a wealth of practical advice and tactics to unleash their full creative potential and break ahead of the crowd. Manu's provocative, insightful applied methodologies for creating new business opportunities and transformative innovations gain resonance from real-world scenarios and conversations with leading innovators such as MIT's Mitchel Resnick. Readers will learn strategies
Imagination Challenge is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.

Genres: Reference

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Alexander Manu is a foresight strategist, author, and professor who has spent his career studying how technological change transforms human behaviour from the inside out. Unlike commentators who approach technology as a purely technical or economic force, Manu’s work begins with a different premise: disruption is behavioural before it is technological. Tools do not simply improve efficiency. They alter perception, reshape desire, and quietly redefine identity.
For over three decades, Manu has advised Fortune 500 companies, governments, and global institutions on innovation and future-proofing, helping leaders understand that the real impact of technology lies not in the device itself, but in how it changes what people value, expect, and become. His frameworks on disruption, behavioural innovation, and the emerging present have influenced both boardrooms and classrooms, positioning him as a distinctive voice at the intersection of strategy, imagination, and human development.
He has published widely on imagination, creativity, and the evolving self in a digital world. In his recent books Transcending Imagination: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Creativity and The Disruption Continuum: Reinventing People and Purpose in an Era of Constant Change, Manu has consistently argued that technology is not an external force acting upon us, but an extension of human intention that ultimately reshapes its creator.
In his latest book, You Were Never Just Using It, he turns this lifetime of research inward. Drawing on personal history, cultural analysis, and decades of observing how behaviours evolve around tools, Manu explores the intimate relationship between everyday technologies and the formation of self. His perspective is rare: a strategist who understands systems, a philosopher of disruption who understands psychology, and a storyteller willing to examine his own becoming. The result is a book that speaks not only to innovation, but to identity.

Reviews

[Federico Calderón · Rating 5 out of 5]

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