With the era of “free capital” having come to an end, the globalization premium stalling, and ecological constraints encroaching, companies can no longer rely on a rising tide to lift all boats. Instead, they will need to imagine new offerings and ways of doing things that will drive future growth and advantage.

But corporate imagination is constrained by the way we see the present: For example, setting the goal of “developing the next version of our product line” confines innovation to existing products, which may mean overlooking opportunities to create entirely new offerings. Aiming to “grow market share by 2%” boxes companies into their current competitive arena. To unleash their imagination, businesses can take inspiration from science fiction. This article provides a step-by-step guide for doing so.

To imagine their futures, companies need to evolve their mental models

Our imagination can be constrained by entrenched mental models—simplified representations of reality our brain creates because the world is too complex to be fully encompassed. Mental models help us navigate everyday reality: When we enter a car, we don’t have to learn the roles of the steering wheel and pedals from scratch. And when we join a project meeting, we have a shared understanding of roles, agenda items, and meeting norms, enabling us to collaborate efficiently.

However, current mental models also hold us back from discovering new possibilities. Organizational cultures, routines, and the dynamics of groupthink make implicit assumptions and beliefs sticky. Stories of corporate downfalls are therefore often stories of entrenched mental models: for example, Kodak observed a rising demand for digital photography—but, because it evaluated this information through the mental model of an analog photography firm, it responded by doubling down on its core business rather than embracing the opportunity to capture a new market.

Conversely, the persistently valuable firms avoid getting stuck in the models that made them successful in the past: NVIDIA embraced tensor cores designed for AI-related tasks while its core gaming business was still growing—a bet validated by the firm’s dominance of the AI industry.

How can your company emulate this habit of evolving its mental models?

An example: Imagining the future of work

Let’s take a well-trodden, often uninspiring topic as an example: The future of work. For many, this will bring to mind familiar observations and arguments about virtual meetings, work-from-home, or the gig economy. But that is more the present than the future of work.

Science fiction paints a very different picture of work in the future: working hand-in-hand with robots, as in Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel; earning money by hunting monsters in virtual worlds, like in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One; or becoming sources of bioelectric power for machines, as in the Wachowskis’ Matrix.

Such fantastical concepts are often beyond the realm of plausibility—and that is precisely why they are useful. Science fiction helps us break from our ingrained way of looking at things. By contemplating a radically different reality—unbounded by current feasibility constraints—as a starting point, we can more fully explore the possibilities of the future.

Science fiction can help companies imagine new possibilities

Science fiction also provides a coherent, holistic view of a possible future, not just an extrapolation of present trends. Immersing ourselves in such futures encourages counterfactual thinking—imagining “what is not, but could be.” Moreover, science fiction often paints worlds which mix elements of dystopia and utopia, inviting us to consider intended and unintended consequences. In doing so, it gives us agency: instead of merely trying to predict a future passively, we can imagine the futures we want to create and shape.

So, should executives read more science fiction? Probably. But there are also more tangible, structured, and collective ways to harness its power.

How to employ science fiction thinking in your company

We have developed a workshop format that can help evolve your company’s mental models—not a standard scenario-planning exercise, but a session that deliberately employs science fiction to spark your imagination and unlock innovation. It proceeds along six steps:

1. Specify the issue. Identify an issue where your company or team needs to break the mold—it could be related to work models, product innovation, or the next strategy cycle.
2. Make your mental models explicit. Formulate the unspoken assumptions that underlie current decision-making. In so doing, you make clear that they are just beliefs, which can be challenged and changed. For example, two key assumptions underlying the business model of traditional hotel chains may be “people want to rent rooms” and “we build properties with attractive rooms.” It’s easy to see now how a company like Airbnb became successful by abandoning the latter assumption, which the incumbents had never questioned.
3. Create a spark. Identify science fiction works that could provide a spark for rethinking the issue. Crucially, the movies, books, or other formats you pick do not have to be mainly about the theme—for example, Caves of Steel and Ready Player One are not about labor, but they indirectly present a vision of it. You should not assume people have deep familiarity with the material: pick clips or passages that the participants can watch or read together and base their discussion on.
4. Keep it simple. Focus on a few questions for participants to contemplate and discuss. Some proven examples are:
   • “What is the vision (of, for example, the future of work) inspired by this piece of science fiction?”—this question guides participants to make explicit the sparks of inspiration created by the piece, and helps them establish a common base of understanding.
   • “What are the utopian and dystopian aspects of this vision?”—this question guides participants to draw out desirable and undesirable aspects of the vision, increasing how much inspiration they can draw from a work.
   • “What are the steps we should take today to work toward utopian and to avoid dystopian aspects?”—this question confers agency to the participants and will ensure that actionable next steps can be extracted after the session.
5. Bring people in. Imaginative exercises benefit from a diversity of perspectives and experiences across the participants. Thus, involve people from beyond the function with the expertise most directly relevant to the topic, and across hierarchical levels.
6. Embrace the fun. Common barriers to imagination include a fear of ideas failing, of being judged by others, or being too immersed in the day-to-day business. To overcome these barriers, treat this session as a game (and designate it as such). Make clear that there are no risks involved—this is just an exploration of ideas. Make sure there is no judgment, and suspend hierarchy. Allot sufficient time for exploratory discussion to take place.

Insights from field-testing

We have successfully deployed this format numerous times. Most recently, at the 2024 St. Gallen Symposium, we imagined the future of work in a group of both established and young leaders.

This proved a fun and engaging session, but also generated interesting insights: and notably, none of the visions of the future of work developed by the participants revolved around well-trodden concepts like hybrid or flexible work.

Instead, the visions of the future painted by science fiction pushed the thinking beyond the existing mental models: One of our inspirations was Lois Lowry’s The Giver, which paints a future in which society assigns jobs at age 12, based on children’s characteristics and the needs of the community. Participants discussed what aspects of this extreme vision could be usefully embraced: For example, they suggested developing better systems to identify people’s innate talents and creating skills-based training programs aligned with job requirements and the strengths of employees. Moreover, they highlighted the advantages of a community-centric work culture, which could increase employee engagement.

Ultimately, however, the reality painted in The Giver is a dystopian one, characterized by limited freedom of choice and individual progression. This inspired discussions about steps companies should take today to avoid such aspects: participants suggested that firms should embrace more flexible career paths, enabling lateral progression, or supporting nonlinear models (that may involve, for example, multiple alternating episodes of education and work)—all of which is set to become more relevant, as life and health spans, and careers, extend.

Finally, the utopian aspects of the future of work provided by other visions sparked discussions about how to move toward these desirable futures: For example, the reality imagined by Ready Player One—in which everything but “eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom” can happen in virtual reality—unlocks new, immersive models for collaboration and heightens inclusion by eliminating geographical barriers and reducing the impact of physical disabilities. To ensure that these benefits can be realized, participants outlined the need for developing virtual reality training programs today, and to ensure equitable access to virtual reality spaces (for example, by distributing the necessary hardware to workers around the globe).

Companies can easily get stuck in their mental models—which hinders them from imagining their futures. Science fiction can provide a spark for breaking the mold—so leverage it, before reality overtakes the inspiration.

Author’s note: this article is inspired by the 2024 St. Gallen Symposium, a student-driven global platform for cross-generational dialogue involving senior and emerging leaders, to discuss pressing issues and enact change.

A version of this article also appeared on the World Economic Forum Agenda.