CONCEPT
Institutional Imagination
The capacity to envision and construct organizational forms, governance structures, and social arrangements that do not yet exist—Unger's answer to what becomes the scarcest resource in the AI age.
Institutional imagination is the human capacity to conceive of and build institutional arrangements that transcend the given—organizational models, governance mechanisms, educational frameworks, social contracts that do not currently exist but could exist if democratic communities exercised their constructive powers. Unger argues this is the scarcest form of human creativity: scarcer than scientific insight (which operates within established methodologies), scarcer than artistic vision (realizable by individuals), scarcer than technological innovation (which market incentives reward). The AI transition demonstrates catastrophic asymmetry between technological and institutional imagination—systems capable of human-quality reasoning produced in a decade, while not a single new governance form adequate to their democratic control has been constructed. The cultivation of institutional imagination is therefore the most consequential educational and political project of the AI age.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Institutional imagination operates at a different scale and with different requirements than other forms of creativity. Scientific imagination produces new theories within established disciplinary frameworks. Artistic imagination produces new works within established