What colour is your imagination?
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Imagination is timeless. But the way we channel it is always changing – and today, it’s impossible to ignore the impact of AI.
In 2024 we ran original research that confirmed what we already knew from experience: imagination is a measurable driver of business performance.
Our report included a section on AI as an additional consideration, proposing that the emergence of new tools made this very human behaviour more valuable, not less.
Things have changed a lot in two years: it’s fast becoming impossible to separate human and AI creativity. So we’ve revisited our argument, folded in new research and added a fifth element to our definition of what imagination looks like in an organisation: craft.
senior B2B decision-makers in the UK and US
behaviours that imaginative companies inhabit
strongly agreed that imagination drives strategic success
For The Business of Imagination, we surveyed 500 senior B2B decision-makers in the UK and US to understand the role imagination plays in business success – or lack of it.
Source: The Business of Imagination, 2024
They collaborate across functions, rather than leaving strategy to a select few “creative types”.
They look ahead and fail fast, exploring future scenarios and treating setbacks as learning opportunities.
They let ideas come from anywhere, making it safe for people throughout the business to put forward an unconventional thought.
They invest in creativity, dedicating real time, budget and attention to nurturing imagination.
Risk aversion, rigid processes and a lack of leadership support held most back. Personal belief was not the problem: 44% of respondents strongly agreed that imagination drives strategic success, yet only 23% of that group behaved like a highly imaginative business.
of respondents strongly agreed that imagination drives strategic success
of that group behaved like a highly imaginative business
Source: The Business of Imagination, 2024
We framed AI as being a useful tool, but one that is limited to past data and unable to produce anything new.
We surmised that businesses should double down on human ingenuity rather than invest in yet more data analysis.
We don’t need to tell you that, since then, AI's capabilities and prominence in business – and all areas of life – have moved on at a pace. It is now embedded in everyday creative and strategic work, for better or worse.
The evidence across four studies shows the tools can actually boost individual creativity, helping people to produce more novel or useful ideas and imagine new possibilities.
It’s good news for people who thoughtfully build AI into their creative workflows.
When everyone uses the same tools, ideas can converge on the same "good enough" answers.
While AI can help improve the power of a single idea, it reduces the diversity of a group of ideas.
This held true across very different situations studied: story writing, circular economy solutions and creating funny captions.
This phenomenon of idea convergence is risky for organisations. As the research says:
A highly diverse set is more likely to contain a few highly original outliers that are both genuinely original and potentially valuable.”
Without these, businesses might never break through with anything genuinely new.
Idea convergenceSource ↗
Imagination matters today not because AI can't create, but because it makes everyone create alike.
That reinforces a critical point we made in our previous report: imagination is a collective, organisational capability, not a solo talent.
In fact, further research indicates that “structured, deliberate use of AI” can enhance critical thinking and skill development.
This means not just passively offloading tasks onto AI, but using it to find, organise and digest information and create connections we might not have landed on alone.
Used intentionally, it can be vital cognitive support for the unruly, unrestrained thinking that characterises imagination, freeing up space for people to push further and envision brand new possibilities.
A study by Michael Gerlich, Professor and Head of Executive Education at the Swiss Business School found that essays written using ChatGPT for structured prompting to encourage deeper thinking were scored the highest by expert reviewers: more than those using AI without guidance or not using AI at all.
He recommends starting by thinking through the problem yourself before turning to AI, and then using it to give feedback – ensuring human reasoning is the key force shaping the argument.
Research co-authored by Yeun Joon Kim, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School, found that joint creativity between humans and AI may not bear fruit immediately, but “it does improve over time if there are instructions and guidance on idea co-development”.
it does improve over time if there are instructions and guidance on idea co-development”
Yeun Joon KimAssociate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School
Employees collaborate with AI in script and content generation, but “instead of treating script development as a single task, Netflix breaks it down into sub-activities such as idea generation, evaluation and selection, each involving different degrees of human and AI participation”.
For example, people write first drafts and storylines, then use AI to assess character development, narrative pacing and patterns of audience demand. It refines and provides guidance on how to resonate with audiences – but the final scripts are still written strictly by human screenwriters.
Enhancing creativity with AI is all about learning, over time, how to get the best out of each side.
Organisations need to ensure employees have targeted support – which means investing in the time and space to develop these skills. It may also mean rethinking incentives to encourage employees to retain their critical thinking and not offload blindly to AI: for instance, emphasising quality over pure efficiency.
Imagine you have a candle. If you tell AI to improve it, you’ll get a candle that shines brighter and longer, costs less, and probably has the best design. But AI will not make the leap from candle to light bulb. That is out-of-the-box thinking—a type of creative thinking that AI, which is based on pattern recognition, cannot do.”
Michael GerlichProfessor and Head of Executive Education at the Swiss Business School
The research points to two places.
Origination
The first is origination: when humans lead early ideation, organisations maintain the diversity of ideas that AI would otherwise flatten. This can include thinking through a problem yourself first, and then only asking an LLM for feedback once you’ve reached an answer yourself. AI can then be used to test and refine.
Judgement
The second is judgement: a study by KPMG found that only about half of people actually improve on what AI produces alone. Adding value on top of AI is a skill, and it is getting harder.
We call that skill craft: having the taste, discernment and discipline to know when, and when not, to use AI.
It’s not a rejection of AI, but a defence of the inimitable value people bring to the brainstorm or blank page, no matter what tools they are using.
of marketing leaders see AI slop as a major threat to their brand equity
say AI-generated content has made them less trusting of brand messaging
of B2B buyers now use AI during their decision-making process
Ultramarine, ground from lapis lazuli, could cost more than gold. Gradually, they began paying for the artist’s hand instead – and when ultramarine was finally made synthetically in the 1820s, the colour lost its premium entirely. What mattered was what an artist could do with it.
AI is doing the same to execution. What once cost a premium is now available to everyone – including you, when you selected the hue for this report – so the value shifts to the taste, discernment and judgement that make something exceptional. That is craft.
And the commercial stakes of using AI effectively are rising.
As AI increasingly makes so many brand identities look and sound the same, distinctiveness becomes the memory shortcut that gets a brand shortlisted.
Already, 41% of marketing leaders see AI slop as a major threat to their brand equity, showing that we have to work harder to protect craft.
Source: Interbrand and Paradigm ↗
A brand's influence on purchase decisions is growing again for the second year running (+3% in 2026), after a decade of decline (-1.5% on average a year), according to research by Interbrand and Paradigm.
Buyers are also more sceptical: Canva reports that 57% say AI-generated content has made them less trusting of brand messaging.
They are not rejecting AI: they want transparency, credibility and demonstrated expertise, with a human touch. They want evidence of craft.
An astonishing but barely surprising 94% of B2B buyers now use AI during their decision-making process.
LLMs are more likely to recommend brands with high-quality, original content because it signals expertise and authority (something we help brands surface through our Brand Proximity service).
Craft shapes how machines represent a brand as well as how people perceive it.
Passively using AI led to a 20% decline in feelings of work ownership and a 10% decline in perceived meaningfulness. Our previous research linked imagination to a happier, more engaged workforce and the commercial benefits that follow, demonstrated by a Gallup multi-decade meta-analysis published in 2024 which showed a highly engaged workforce enjoys 23% higher profitability and 18% higher productivity.
Used carelessly, AI risks trading that engagement for apathy.
The question for leaders has shifted from
“How can we go beyond data analysis to be more imaginative as a business?”
to
“How can we use AI effectively to strengthen that imagination?”
Craft isn’t just an essential characteristic of imagination. It’s a superpower for those who wield it. Our previous research found that, when it comes down to it, most companies just aren’t all that imaginative: there’s a real opportunity for those who do embed all five behaviours into how they work to stand out.
answers so far
chose the same family as you
different colours named
Source: illustrative sample answers for this draft, plus answers given in this browser
Craft is about choice – and it’s essential to imagination.
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