Our memories will taint and shape every version of future we imagine. For example, it is impossible to imagine your ideal house without using the memory of aspects of homes or hotels you have gathered from memory.

To innovate you need to let go of the memories and reimagine.

I am not talking about the creative process of an artist or incremental improvements which can be systematically achieved using lateral thinking. It is about radical innovations that shift the course of a business sector, or of humanity itself.

The past tainting the vision of our future could be why most innovative thinkers read science fiction and play video games and seek out unique life experiences.

It is possible they are not doing it on purpose, but these escapes into the fantasy worlds prime their minds to think without the constraints of memory and imagine a future devoid of the influence of the past.

Radical Innovation is nothing but imagining a better future that is not tainted by the memories of the past and pulling that future into the present through hard work determination and risk of failure.

A unique breed of people that Ray Dalio calls shapers can do this. According to him, Shapers are people who can go from visualization to actualization. Shaper = Visionary + Practical thinker + Determined.

Once the vision is established, micromanaging the execution at scale is the key to go from ideas to reality. That is a huge transition to make for someone who has the head in the cloud. People who are good at ideation are poor at the execution of the details. But fortunately, the capacity of exemplary execution and determination can be learned.

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