What Color Is Your Imagination?

With What Color Is Your Imagination? I have created a metaphor where the types of problem-solving behaviors and environments are represented by an assortment of colors.

For example, Yellow Imagination is the “we’ve always done it that way” type of imagination, or the imagination of fear. Green Imagination sees creativity as a commodity to be traded and, therefore, is highly impacted by personal motivations and incentives. White Imagination is the implementation of the creativity of others and is therefore not as “vivid” and “vibrant,” is less impactful than original ideas. Black Imagination is what we would call the “mad genius” type of imagination. Those exhibiting this type of imagination are the ones about whom we usually wish, “If they would only use their powers for good.”

While no type of imagination is ultimately bad or long term – we each exhibit all the distinct types of problem solving at one time or another – there is an ideal. That ideal is Purple Imagination. It is the combination of Red Imagination and Blue Imagination.

If we take Red Imagination (love, passion, and enthusiasm) and combined it with Blue Imagination (analytics, statistics, and empiricism) we get Purple Imagination: a synergistic, almost exponentially beneficial environment where innovation and invention occur.