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Conversations in Management

Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Albert Einstein had issues with authority. His was a rebellious spirit that was particularly chafed by the routine and ordinary. This became immediately apparent during his school days. He resisted rote learning as stifling. His attitude resulted in an unhappy departure from one school and his being labeled as someone who would, “never amount to much,” at another. Even in college, his prickly relations with the faculty cost him a teaching position after graduation. But Einstein wasn’t just being ornery. He had an intuitive suspicion of common knowledge and conventional thought. To a great extent, popular beliefs—whether dealing with science, politics or religion—served merely as foils for his rich imagination. And this blend of audacity and imagination proved to be the potent source of his genius.

Einstein applied this genius in a way unfamiliar to many of us. His biographers have suggested that he was slow to develop speech and as a consequence, learned to think in pictures. This ability to visualize problems would become one of his greatest strengths. The technique, called “thought experiments,” was hardly new. Its use dates back to the ancient Greeks. Typically, an experiment is imagined and then later turned into an actual physical experiment. But Einstein’s vivid imagination enabled him to use the technique with unusual clarity. In a well known example, he visualized a boy racing alongside a light beam. Einstein theorized that as the boy reached the speed of light, time would slow and the light beam would appear stationary. The experiment, of course, was never carried out but the theory was validated by other means. His visualizations became, in effect, a practical means of spring-boarding from insight to insight. Each opened new possibilities for creative inquiry. And the simplicity of his visualizations excited the intellect of scientist and non-scientist alike who then generated intriguing inquiries of their own.

Generally speaking, we don’t see a lot of genius in our workplace on a day-to-day basis. It’s not due to any shortage of knowledge. There are plenty of smart and talented folks wherever you look. And while there are exceptions (you know who you are), most people are working hard to do a good job. The problem is a dearth of imagination. We just don’t spend a lot of time picturing better ways of living our lives or getting things done. Some of the usual suspects are to blame: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” or, “No need to reinvent the wheel.” Most of the time, though, it’s because we’ve grown comfortable doing things the way we do them. After struggling through an initial learning curve, we don’t see much need to imagine another way of doing things. Sure, our knowledge increases with experience, training and tenure, but our basic assumptions remain untouched. That’s why we might want to consider conducting a few Einstein-like thought experiments of our own.

A good place to start is by asking, “Why?” (Now this can be really annoying, so you might consider simply asking yourself, “Why?”) Try challenging conventional wisdom—particularly when the answer to your question is, “because we’ve always done it that way.” Then think big. Imagine what you could do with your existing resources if you applied them differently. Visualize extraordinary outcomes. There’s an old chestnut that says, “If you keep on doing what you’re doing, you’ll never get more than what you’ve got.” Like a lot of old chestnuts, this one is true. So stop doing what you’re doing and just imagine….

—Ebert