My Curious Life

Scott Berkun has a reputation for savvy insights into the business of design, especially in the world of software development. He shared one of those insights on his blog earlier this month in a post about the underuse of imagination. He made an interesting point about how the term imagination, the source of innovation, is almost shunned in the business world, yet the word vision, connected to shamans and drug use, is embraced by C-level executives at corporations around the world.

Sometimes it’s little observations like Scott’s that seem so obvious, yet so profound. It’s not that no one has ever noticed before … Einstein said it decades ago:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I appreciate Scott’s willingness to share these observations and I hope that others will take note. Those of us in the interaction design / user experience design world rely on our imaginations to make those leaps of faith, and we know that information only gets you part of the way toward your end goal … imagination helps you take that last step.

Scott’s new book The Myths of Innovation looks to be a treasure trove of these insights. It’s definitely on my short list of must-reads for just this reason. Thanks, Scott, for sharing.