President's Introduction


John J. Cimino, Jr., President and CEO of Creative Leaps International on “Imagination in Today’s World”.


Whether in the arts or the sciences, the social sector or the business sector, imagination carries with it an inherent optimism, an enabling affirmative dynamic. Our spirits thrive on this energy, and business, as a human endeavor, cannot thrive without it.

Einstein said it best. "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Imagination creates possibilities and envisions the future. Imagination leads the way to the only learning potent enough to change our thinking, perceiving and acting. It unleashes our intuition, extends our sensory acuity and helps us see through baffling chaos to what Stewart Kaufmann at the Santa Fe Institute calls “the adjacent possible”—the countless breakthrough ideas just one metaphor, one mental picture away from “ah-HA”! It is the future waiting to be born.

Imagination is optimistic. It is the art of the possible. Whether in the arts or the sciences, the social sector or the business sector, imagination carries with it an inherent optimism, an enabling affirmative dynamic. Our spirits thrive on this energy; and business, as a human endeavor, cannot thrive without it.

At Creative Leaps International are passionate about learning, passionate about bringing ideas to life, especially in ways that can take you by surprise. We are fascinated by boundaries, intersections and horizons—the places where things connect and become (or get ready to become) something else. This is the favorite terrain of imagination and the arts: the space amidst transition, paradox and uncertainty. In our experience, applying arts-enriched imaginative thinking to business problems produces deeper insights and more reliable perceptions, new ways of seeing problems and framing questions, and new vantage points for looking beyond our limitations and into the future.

As individuals and as a society, we need the vision and courage of our creative leaps. We need the life-changing heart-mind connection begetting not only creativity, but courage and compassion. For us at Creative Leaps International, this is the heart of the artistic process and the meaning of art in our lives. In our world, the arts are no longer some parallel experience you have along the way, but rather a powerful source of insight and transformation feeding directly into the thinking, feeling and acting of daily life -- full of possibility, truth and optimism. Here at Creative Leaps International, we believe that extraordinary things are possible. And we really do believe that we can change the world.

In our world, music is never just music. It is revolutionary. It is the sound of ideas.