In your work and books you constantly explore the theme of the power of imagination. In a historical moment when seemingly overwhelming forces seem out of our control, how can the imaginative approach free us from the trap of short-termism?
We are going through an extremely dangerous moment in history, in which, on the one hand, the political sphere shows a deep mistrust of imagination, and on the other, the future itself is being colonised. When young people are asked to think about the future, what they imagine is often limited to the technologies associated with Elon Musk.
The future can take many different forms, but the problem is that both segments of the political sphere and progressive movements fighting for social and climate justice, and for more sustainable economies, speak almost exclusively in terms of collapse and extinction.
If everyone keeps talking in terrifying narratives, focusing on what is broken rather than on what is already working somewhere in the world – and could open up new possibilities, stories, and hopes – the future disappears, and we remain dangerously stuck in the present. In my new book, How to Fall in Love with the Future (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2025), I argue that movements for climate and social justice must cultivate what we call longing in English – a burning desire that runs deeper than simple desire. It is a visceral feeling, like first love, that keeps you awake at night. We need to help people fall in love with the future, and to bring it back to life in a multisensory way.
Neuroscience shows us that imagining the future and recalling the past activate the same neural networks. Imagination draws from the cupboards of memory to create new combinations. But if all you do is watch Fox News all day, how can you imagine a low-carbon world? There is no material in memory from which to build that imagination. One of the most important things I do in my work is therefore to tell people many concrete stories to help them imagine what the world could be like if we did more.
How to balance future visions with technological advancements, maintaining human connection with natural systems?
I question the idea that all technological advancements are automatically beneficial. With the Internet we thought we would democratize the world, with social media we would make revolutions. But as Audre Lorde said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. At the beginning we felt that the Internet and social media were the tools that would allow us to dismantle the master’s house, now they have become the master’s tools at a very dangerous level.
I see the same trajectory for artificial intelligence: just because a new and shiny technology is launched doesn’t mean that in 20 years it won’t be profoundly dangerous.
In my workshops, where I’ve involved thousands of people, I always bring my imaginary “time machine”. When I ask people to visualize the future they really want, almost no one mentions AI or technology. People talk about clean air, green cities, human connections, fulfilling work. I believe technology should be in service of us achieving this future, not the other way around.
But the situation we’re experiencing is paradoxical: for AI we find billions in investments because we can’t be left behind, while for climate – where if we don’t act we’ll lose everything – there’s never enough money.
Often some companies think that problems like climate change are too big and they don’t have the right tools to address it. How can people and companies become catalysts of imagination in the current uncertainty?
People who need to make a shift often use others’ inaction to justify their own inaction, when actually it should be a race, a competition where people are excited by others’ innovation.
In my work with companies I start by observing that imagination needs space. If an organization doesn’t find a way to stop and create space to reflect and reimagine what it’s doing, it will just keep doing the same thing.
Intentionally creating space in the organization for a reimagining process is the vital first step and requires commitment: imagination is like a muscle that needs to be trained. I’ll give a concrete example: my friend Phoebe Tickell designs a series of trainings she calls imagination activist with big organizations and municipalities in the UK. Part of the process is about building an imaginative capacity into that organization, a willingness to ask the big and audacious questions that come from asking “what if?”.
Another crucial aspect I emphasize when working with companies is the importance of putting down roots in the territory. Companies should connect to the place where they operate, support local community projects, buy from local suppliers, install solar panels. Not be simple bystanders, but become a force for good in their community: this transforms how employees see their work.
Speaking of work, Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce 2025 reveals that work engagement levels are very low everywhere – in Italy only 10% of the workforce says they are engaged in their work – and only a third of people say they trust their leaders. How can we increase engagement?
From a survey conducted last year of people working on oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, it emerged that 80% of respondents would prefer to work in renewable energy.
This means that people in general would like to be part of something better, more exciting.
Imagine working for a company that everyone considers a positive transformative force in a city: it would change everything.
In France, for example, there was a construction company that had bought land near their office and paid two people to grow food, so they could provide all employees with a box of fresh local vegetables every week. In this way, the company had suddenly become a better place to work.
In the workshops you conduct with companies and organizations, have you seen new forms of collaboration and value emerge?
In one of my workshops, a Brussels company dealing with energy efficiency, composed mostly of engineers and data analysts, realized they needed a storyteller in the team. Because, more than data and numbers, to really touch people and convey the importance of what they were doing, they recognized the importance of storytelling, and acknowledged they didn’t know how to do it effectively. In another workshop I worked with Patagonia. I don’t know if there’s an actual connection with the work we did together, but it was fascinating to hear them say years later that their primary purpose is to tackle the climate crisis and all the profits they generate are in service of this purpose. It’s the level of ambition we need to see.
Jon Alexander, a friend and writer who wrote a book called Citizens: why the key to fixing everything is all of us, argues that we need to move from seeing people as consumers to seeing them as citizens. There are numerous examples of what a company can do to help build a community of people around itself who have a sense of participation and ownership over what’s happening.
How does Sociocracy work, the organizational model you use in the Transition Towns movement?
Sociocracy is a way of working together that involves a flat structure and organization in circles, which is very interesting because it brings out a different culture of how decisions are made.
In the United Kingdom, there is a large organic farming company called Riverford, one of the most successful organic food businesses in the country. The company has shifted to a model in which workers share in part of the profits and are far more involved in shaping how the business operates.
Another example is closer to home for me and involves two of my children, who attend a democratic school. Every week, the students meet and have the power to hire and dismiss teachers and to change any school rule. It may sound like a recipe for disaster, but in practice it teaches children, from an early age, how to make reasoned decisions that serve not individual interests, but the wellbeing of people and communities.
We should start learning these skills as children and then transfer them to the workplace.
Don’t you think that learning to develop these skills could represent another level of complexity within organizations already overloaded with procedures?
It’s curious how this objection never emerges when talking about artificial intelligence. Social technologies are just as important as digital ones.
One of the main lessons learnt in almost 20 years of activity of the Transition Towns movement is that how we do things matters as much as what we do. Learning these skills, building different cultures where we don’t replicate the same patterns that created the situation we’re in now is really important.
If you work in an organization that provides you with locally grown vegetables every week and at the same time teaches you new ways of collaborating, you’re acquiring transferable skills that other employers are looking for. Learning these new skills becomes part of your job, the same way as learning how to use new software for managing emails or a messaging system like Slack.
There are industrial sectors, such as automotive, going through a transition phase where innovations and solutions to problems often come from other fields. In your workshops have you ever seen people able to develop a broader perspective that goes beyond the silos of their industrial sector?
We often use the words innovation, creativity, and imagination interchangeably, but for me they refer to very different concepts. Innovation is largely about creating new products that generate financial returns. Creativity is closely related. Writer Ursula K. Le Guin once said that capitalism had hollowed out creativity – to the point that she no longer used the term – but it could not touch imagination, because imagination is more voluntary, freer, playful, even mischievous. Imagination cannot be controlled.
In my workshops, part of what I try to do is expand the scope of the “what if” questions people are asking. If we ask, “What if we had more electric cars?”, we are still imagining a future in which our cities are full of cars and designed around them – even if they are electric. But what if we imagined a city with public transport so efficient that no one felt the need to own a car at all? In Freiburg, there is a neighbourhood called Vauban where 3,000 people live without cars, supported by excellent public transport and cycling infrastructure. It is a reality – and it works.
In a workshop in Paris with a group of museum directors, I asked them to imagine how they would act if they were in the midst of a climate emergency. I was not interested in their sustainability strategies, but in what they would do differently in an emergency. A woman working at the Louvre suggested: “What if we sold the Mona Lisa and used the money to address climate change?” It won’t happen, but it helps us grasp the scale of change we actually need.
Another story I often share comes from Liège, where in 2014 a project was launched to create a food belt around the city: the Ceinture Aliment Terre Liégeoise (CATL). The question that sparked it all was: “What if, within a generation, most of the food eaten in Liège came from land close to the city?” That question triggered a food revolution, because it was bold and expansive enough to unlock new, brilliant thinking. This is what imagination can do.
What is your hope for the future looking at companies?
My hope is that we can create a critical mass of companies excited to be pioneers in tackling climate change, where people put time and effort into reimagining what they do because they see it as their purpose.
It’s difficult, because we’re in a moment where there’s a huge backlash, a narrative that says legally the only objective of a company can be to maximize profit and not have any other social purpose.
I think that, just as in civil society there are movements like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, there needs to be something like that in the business community. There’s an expression that says “there’s no business on a dead planet”, but I think most people running companies should already know that.
We need a movement that comes from visionary CEOs or from people within companies, that says it makes no sense to run a successful business if that business destroys the possibilities of living for our children and grandchildren. This push needs to come from business, because business can move quickly and ambitiously and has resources that those of us working in the third sector can’t even imagine. We need companies prepared to be bold and audacious.
