The Imagination Economy
The attention economy had a good run. For two decades, the bottleneck was eyeballs: who could capture them, who could hold them, who could monetize them. Entire industries were built around the scarce resource of human attention. But that era is ending, and something far more interesting is replacing it.
As AI automates every technical and operational function (writing, coding, designing, analyzing, building), the bottleneck shifts. Execution is no longer scarce. Distribution is no longer the hard part. The only remaining path to genuine economic mobility is imagination: the capacity to envision and create something from nothing. To see what is not yet there. To look at the world as it is and picture what it could be.
Here’s where the etymology unlocks everything. “Imagine” comes from the Latin imago, meaning image. And we are made in the image of God: imago Dei. The one capacity that cannot be replicated by any machine is the God-given capacity to imagine. To create. Not to recombine existing patterns (which AI does brilliantly) but to originate something genuinely new. When my friend Ron heard me lay this out, his response was immediate: “It’s literally the God economy, bro.” He wasn’t wrong.
This is the economy we’re entering. Call it the imagination economy. The people and organizations that thrive will be the ones with the clearest, boldest, most Spirit-led vision for what should exist. The tools to build it are becoming nearly free. The ability to see what needs building is becoming infinitely valuable.
The K-Shaped Reality
This connects directly to what I’ve been calling the K-shaped economy thesis. AI is creating a bifurcation. Businesses and individuals are heading in one of two directions: either they leverage AI to multiply their output by orders of magnitude, or they get compressed by competitors who do. There’s very little middle ground forming. The imagination economy is the path to the upper branch of that K. If you can imagine and articulate a compelling vision, AI gives you the leverage to build it at a scale that would have been impossible five years ago. If you can’t (or won’t), you’re competing on execution against systems that never sleep.
Creativity as Currency
At a panel I moderated at SXSW, Rostam put it simply: “Creativity is the currency of the future.” He’s right. But I’d push it one step further. It’s not creativity in the generic sense (making pretty things or having clever ideas). It’s the specific capacity to see a gap between how things are and how they should be, and then to marshal the resources (increasingly AI-powered) to close that gap. That’s imagination in the economic sense. That’s what generates value now.
A Personal Paradox
I’ll note something with humility and a little humor. I have aphantasia. The word comes from the Greek phantasia, and it literally means “no imagination” in the visual sense. I cannot picture anything in my mind’s eye. If you ask me to visualize a beach, I get nothing. Darkness. And yet here I am, building what I’m calling the imagination economy. I think there’s something instructive in that paradox. Imagination, in the sense that matters economically and spiritually, is not about mental imagery. It’s about vision. It’s about seeing (with the eyes of the Spirit, not the mind’s eye) what could exist and should exist, and then having the conviction to build it. That kind of imagination has never required a vivid inner picture. It requires faith.
The Practical Implication
If you’re reading this and wondering what to invest in, the answer is your capacity to imagine. Not your capacity to execute (AI handles that increasingly well). Not your capacity to manage information (AI handles that too). Your capacity to sit with a hard problem, to listen for what the Spirit is saying, and to articulate a vision that nobody else has articulated yet. That is the scarce resource. That is what the market will pay for. That is what cannot be automated.
And here’s the thing: your imagination has a shape. It shows up in the things you’re drawn to, the quotes that make you stop, the work that pulls you forward. That pattern of taste is unique to you. It’s what I call your soulprint, and it’s the most honest expression of what you’re meant to build.
Key Takeaway
As AI commoditizes execution, the only durable source of economic value is imagination: the God-given capacity to envision what does not yet exist and to create it.