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

8. Emerging Signals

There’s really no such thing as “thinking outside the box.” But we can select a different box to think in. Your box is your business model, your world view, your paradigm. It is the framework of the metaphor that you use to make sense of the world around you.

—Roy Williams, author and marketing consultant

Opportunities in Plain Sight

Every day we are surrounded by information that may reveal a new signal, a new speck on the horizon. We need to open our eyes not only to the words that we read in newspaper headlines, but to the possibilities they sometimes represent.

I once read that every second of every day, two Barbies are sold somewhere in the world. Is there a new possibility in this? Any opportunity? How long before the ...