Does my organisation lack imagination?

Organisational imagination is not simply having more ideas or running an occasional innovation session. It is the capacity to envision and explore possible futures, then turn broader perspectives into practical choices. In a B2B organisation, it can be assessed through four connected behaviours: collaboration across functions; willingness to test ideas and look beyond current conditions; openness to ideas from any role or source; and deliberate investment in creativity.

This distinction matters because weak innovation outcomes can have several causes, including unclear ownership, poor customer insight, limited resources or risk aversion. An imagination gap is more specific: people lack the permission, contact, time or support to move beyond established assumptions. Data can help test and rationalise a possibility, but it cannot substitute for identifying a possibility that has not yet appeared in historical patterns.

Start by examining how work actually happens, not whether leaders say creativity matters. Ask whether cross-functional teams are involved early when strategy is formed, whether people can raise unconventional ideas without immediate dismissal, whether teams investigate future scenarios, and whether time, budget and leadership attention are assigned to creative work.

A gap is likely when imagination is praised but employees must fit it around operational work. The same applies when workshops produce energy but no follow-on ownership, funding or decision route. Look for the difference between permission in principle and support in practice. Protected time can create room for people to think differently, but its value depends on leadership participation, freedom to explore beyond immediate responsibilities and a path for promising ideas to be developed.

Treat imagination as an input to better decisions, not as an alternative to evidence or governance. Bring together people with different functions and perspectives to surface possibilities that a single team may miss. Then use data, customer knowledge and disciplined review to test which possibilities deserve further investment.

The practical test is whether collaboration changes what the organisation chooses to explore, fund and implement. Cross-functional participation can also create buy-in before an idea reaches execution. In the survey, companies that consistently involved cross-functional teams in strategy ideation reported stronger revenue outcomes than those that only sometimes or never did so. That is an association, not proof that collaboration alone caused growth. It does, however, make collaboration a useful operating measure alongside resource commitment, experimentation and commercial outcomes.

Historical data, market analysis and precedent remain useful for understanding what has happened, setting constraints and evaluating options. They are less suited to generating a genuinely different future direction because they begin with information already available. In uncertain conditions, organisations need both analytical discipline and the ability to imagine scenarios that existing data cannot confirm.

A balanced approach separates two activities. First, create space for diverse people to frame possibilities, including options outside familiar assumptions. Second, apply evidence and judgement to decide what to test, stop or scale. This avoids two common errors: treating data as a source of all strategic answers, or treating creativity as a substitute for rigorous evaluation. The aim is not less governance, but governance that can assess unfamiliar opportunities as well as known ones.