The Power of Imagination

Jay Walker on the fuel that drives innovation

Jay Walker, founder of Priceline and curator of Tedmed, talks with Alan Murray about how companies should reward imagination over innovation.

Jay S. Walker founded and is curator of TEDMED, a group dedicated to improving the future of health and medicine. Here are edited excerpts from his remarks at the Unleashing Innovation conference.

On why imagination has been undervalued for so long: For most of human history, there was a ruling class and then there was everybody else. If you were part of everybody else, it wasn't your job to imagine a different future, different ways of doing things. So, imagination is a fairly modern phenomenon. It really only takes force in the 1800s in the way we think of it today, where you can make a living and not get killed for being imaginative.

On encouraging imagination: People talk about wanting more innovation. But innovation is a process result. Imagination is the fuel. You're not going to get innovation if you don't have imagination. Most organizations do not value imagination, do not encourage it, do not reward it. In many cases, they don't even think about it. But if you're not thinking about imagination, I guarantee you're not going to have meaningful innovation.

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