Co-design for sustainable futures

Imagination Otherwise is a participatory design methodology that uses imagination as a strategic tool for climate understanding and action. It exists to address the growing imagination gap in climate work: while many understand the data and urgency, few can envision radically different futures—or feel empowered to help create them. Traditional sustainability efforts often focus on efficiency and reduction, keeping organizations within extractive paradigms. At the same time, stakeholders—from employees to communities to ecosystems—remain disconnected from decision-making. Through five phases—Attune, Imagine, Translate, Activate—the framework embeds storytelling, speculative scenarios, and ecosystem empathy directly into strategy processes. It shifts climate communication from guilt-driven messaging to generative storytelling, and moves organizations from human-centered design toward planetary-centered transformation. By making imagination a core competency, Imagination Otherwise supports systemic change rather than incremental adjustment.