Imagination: A Process. Not a Moment

Part 3 of a three-part series discussing the importance of imagination. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

Over the past two months, I’ve been sharing my ideas about the importance of cultivating imagination to stimulate innovation. Most of this is great fun, and I hope I’ve enticed you to do some of your own daydreaming, and maybe you’ve begun to see some of the impact in your own efforts. Imagination – the ability to envision that which has never been seen, heard, or experienced – is pleasurable, and adds collateral benefits, such as a reduced tendency to interpret unfamiliar stimuli as a threat, and an improved ability to generate novel solutions on the fly. Imagination doesn’t have to end with an inspirational idea. In this post, I’m encouraging you to consider imagination as a partner to help you implement those inspirational ideas and sustain their impact.

Take a look with me through the lens of imagination to see the impact that your imagination can have on the future of technology. Learn how NLM fosters this creative process and how we continue to support health care innovation with our tools and services.

As I reflect on my five years as the NLM Director, I realize that the most important contribution I can make to NLM extends beyond the generation of new ideas. It’s about building in the financial and human resources, as well as the processes to sustain the change envisioned through those new ideas. I need to share my vision with my leadership team and listen to the ideas of our NLM staff. To do this, I need to stimulate imagination in those around me. Novel ideas must also be evaluated for their fit with NLM’s mission. From there, we can create an implementation pathway, identify responsible parties, and develop a plan of action. Along the way, anticipated and unanticipated glitches may occur, and may require that we take a step back, revise, or recommit to the plan. Eventually, streams of ideas become programs that we sustain or sunset; new opportunities abound, and the process starts over again.

Imagination is my companion.  Cultivating my own imagination improves my ability to learn from others whose world views differ from my own, recognizing the difference not as a threat, but as an alternative. Imagination helps me envision a range of future states, conducting the mental ‘what if we did . . . .’ exercise and engaging others to join me in that exercise. Imagination-fueled innovation helps me determine whether a lack of ‘fit for the mission’ heralds a need to re-think the innovative idea or a recognition that we must re-examine our mission. And building the skill of imagination augments my practical problem-solving skills so that anticipated and unanticipated glitches can be addressed with creative strategies. Finally, imagination contributes to my (and others) abilities to foresee a future without a familiar and much beloved program, as well as one in which a fledgling program becomes a sustainable core of our enterprise.

One of the practical ways we built the capacity for sustaining innovation into the fabric of NLM was through the creation of the NLM Strategic Plan Implementation Council, led by Mike Huerta, PhD, Director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine. Mike led the development of the NLM Strategic Plan 2017-2027 and leads our ongoing evaluation of the plan and its implementation. But he doesn’t do this alone – he convened a group of 18 staff from across all divisions and all levels within NLM. Once a month this council meets and gathers information from all areas of NLM regarding how the Strategic Plan is guiding our work. The council systematically examines new projects, raises considerations about modifications that may make the plan more useful to us, and provides a forum for ensuring that the cool ideas envisioned in the Strategic Plan realize their full potential for NLM.

When I began this exploration of imagination and innovation, I found myself focused on the spark, the new idea, the act of innovation. As I have reflected over the weeks, highly engaged with my leadership team in a wide range of efforts addressing our core mission and positioning us towards the future, I realized that imagination unaccompanied by strategies of sustainability was foolhardy for the director of a large organization. Yet still, the move from fostering innovation to sustaining innovation does not require one to abandon the effort to imagine; it requires a continuous refreshing of imagination. This leads not only to the initial innovation but to the myriad steps needed to guide the innovation towards its full contribution.  

So – don’t fear that the value of cultivating imagination ends once the inaugural innovation is envisioned – you’ll need that skill all along the journey!