The power of imagineer

As part of my Business Creativity course in Pyeongtaek University, South Korea, students’ final grade was mostly based on a project’s presentation to be showcased in public. In teams, they had to develop an idea they chose for bringing it to the market. In one of the presentations, a student came out with a concept I heard for the first time: she wanted to become an imagineer, and she dared to develop a business consultancy where she could dream about products and services and sell her concept-ideas into creative businesses (one of them was Disney, from where she picked up the concept).

At first sight, I found the concept’s meaning close to innovation, today’s a big buzzword, but imagineer triggered to me a much profound effect: it awoke my desire to dream big, freed from the laws (and restrictions) of the market. Where does its power lie? Imagineer explicitly stems from the integration of Imagination + Engineering in a single concept, two ingredients that have often been (mis)treated separately. Altogether shape imagineer, the ability to make dreams happen. It avoids the trade-off that the system often tells us: become a creative or and executive. With imagineer, we don’t have to choose, we are both.

Beyond the concept, developing our imagineer as a skill can bring us powerful benefits:

#1. It inspires. Becoming consciously aware that our daily life is a great opportunity to work on our dreams is a powerful idea that unleashes our intrinsic motivation. Hence, we become more creative and productive in all what we do.

#2. It breaks out our regular (an often limited) creativity frame. It helps in thinking out-of-the-box, thereby empowering our full creative potential. How? By connecting our self with the origin of our creativity, which is born in our deepest passions and genuine dreams.

#3. It links with the technical skills required for dream > idea > project implementation, reminding us that the capacity to execute our dreams is equally (or even more important) than thinking big. It is the gateway that drives our inner purpose to achieve what we have dreamt for, giving us an extra sense of achievement and meaning in our lives. It’s the other part of the cake that makes the whole, the missing part that makes us feel complete; where intuition+logic and art+science, like yin+yang, come together.

The magic of the word unfolds, once we get and absorb the concept, when we apply it to ourselves as an attitude that can be cultivated, watered every day in order to fuel our full creativity. Imagineer is the seed that spurs our true projects’ growth for the sake of a flourishing life.

Ps: …and it reminded me that students are an endless source of inspiration for those who devote our lives to education (thank you, Seri 😉