EVERY IMAGINATIVE EFFORT BEGINS with a mental spark. Financial pioneer Omar Selim’s spark came from an unexpected source: his teenage children. Selim, who was Barclays head of global markets for institutional clients at the time, was preparing for a trip the following day to Johannesburg. At dinner, he and his children talked about work and life, what matters and what doesn’t. “Okay, so you’re going to fly there tomorrow, stay in a five-star hotel, give a speech, which probably nobody really cares about,” they said. “And this is the path you’ve chosen to dedicate your life to?”
As Selim told us, this blunt exchange with his children actually triggered his imagination, throwing everything into question. And this trigger coincided with a situation at work that gave him a lot of time to think. Barclays had sold its investment management arm to BlackRock, with a non-compete agreement, which meant that Selim and his team, who remained at Barclays, were not allowed to do any asset management.
Selim read and thought deeply about sustainability and how finance might be transformed by non-financial data and machine learning. Catalyzed by the conversation with his children, he rethought the institution he wanted to work for, putting together a mental model for a new kind of asset management business. Eventually, he set up Arabesque, the world’s first asset management firm driven by artificial intelligence and environmental, social and governance metrics.
In this article we will share some insights for sparking your own imagination and that of your team, putting your organization on the path to value creation.
What Inspires Imagination?
Small surprises — like receiving an unexpected e-mail — happen all the time. But the surprises relevant to imagination are the ones that seduce us away from routine thinking and lead us to rethink deeply and inventively. In particular, three types of surprises can inspire imagination:
By taking our frustrations seriously,
