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

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 to:

•   Open their companies' eyes to unseen opportunities

•   Spark the imagination and trigger the potential of product innovation teams

•   Turn inspired ideas into successful products and services.

Imagination Challenge is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.

Alexander Manu is a strategic innovation practitioner, international lecturer and author. He works with executive teams in leading global corporations, in industries as diverse as consumer packaged goods, media, advertising, mobile communications and manufacturing.  Alexander lectures around the world on innovation, imagination, change agents and strategic foresight.  He is a Senior Partner and Chief Imaginator at InnoSpa International Partners, teaches "Innovation, Foresight and Business Design" at the Rotman School of Management , and is a Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design and in Toronto.

In his client and research work, Alexander is involved in transforming organizations by exploring and defining new competitive spaces, the development of new strategic business competencies and creation of imaginative innovation methods. He believes that the exploration of possibility requires imagination as a prerequisite for strategic change and innovation.  For over 20 years Alexander has enabled global companies as diverse as Motorola, LEGO, Whirlpool, Nokia, Navteq and Unilever,  to develop policies and strategies that address emerging issues through strategic foresight and pre-competitive business models.

Author of Everything 2.0: Redesign your Business Through Foresight and Brand Innovation,  2008,  The Imagination Challenge Strategic Foresight and Innovation for the Global Economy, 2006, ToolToys: Tools with an Element of Play, 1995, and The Big Idea of Design, 1999 , as well as of over 40 articles published in national and international periodicals, Alexander has an exceptional and sustained activity as an international lecturer, being invited to give over 300 keynote lectures in 23 countries.