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<v ->Welcome to Leaders on Imagination,</v>

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where we ask business leaders

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about the role of imagination in business.

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Very pleased today to be joined by Bob Goodson,

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who is a former language scholar

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turned Silicon Valley Entrepreneur.

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He helped build Yelp and he is currently

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the president and co-founder of NetBase Quid

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which is a visual and semantic analytics company.

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So welcome Bob.

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<v ->Hello Martin, good to see you.</v>

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<v ->What is imagination, Bob, to you?</v>

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<v ->I always think about the word origin, original,</v>

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because it used to mean for the longest time

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that which has a very clear origin.

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And only recently has it come to mean

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that which does not have a clear origin.

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I think it points to the nature of creativity

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and imagination about involving

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the recombination of existing things.

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<v ->And what role does imagination play in business?</v>

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'Cause we don't often read about it in business textbooks.

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<v ->I think it has a huge role to play today</v>

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in helping organizations adapt to the world around them

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and the changes happening around them.

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And it requires imagination

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to see what's happening and act on it.

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<v ->Is there any reason why it's especially important today?</v>

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<v ->Well, in the past year,</v>

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businesses have seen more change

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in the way people live and the way businesses need to engage

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with their customers than any year in history.

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And so it's become a specially important

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given that fast moving environment that we're operating in.

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<v ->CEOs tell me the imagination is really hard.</v>

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It's especially hard in large companies

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and in successful companies.

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Would you agree and why is it so hard?

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<v ->Yes, it's always difficult,</v>

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but I think it's especially difficult,

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the larger the organization becomes.

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And I think that's because the larger you become,

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the more time and effort is spent

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on inward facing activities and thinking,

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and the less time an organization has

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to be interfacing with its boundaries

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and that which exists outside of the organization.

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<v ->I know you take special efforts</v>

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to keep imagination alive in NetBase Quid.

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What are some of your tricks and techniques?

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<v ->Yes, we do.</v>

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We embrace an innovative culture

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and one of the techniques we use to perpetuate this

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is there's competitions through which we saw solutions

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to important customer problems

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from every employee in the company.

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Innovation is not limited to one department

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or other at NetBase Quid.

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<v ->So paint a picture of imagination,</v>

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something concrete that Quid has done, NetBase Quid,

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that you consider to be an act of imagination.

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<v ->I think the most recent thing in the last few years</v>

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is that we have re-imagined

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what continuous intelligence can be

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for the front office functions of an enterprise.

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Continuous intelligence has brought automation

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and intelligent ways to make decisions

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to back office functions and operational matters.

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And we've envisaged what this could mean

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for front office functions like marketing and strategy.

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Things that most people wouldn't imagine could be automated

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or this kind of technology could be brought to.

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We've imagined that, and we've built a solution for that,

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and we're the first to do it.

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<v ->Imagination is triggered by surprise,</v>

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and you and I have just had the pleasure

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of writing an article together for Harvard Business Review

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on the role of spotting and harnessing

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anomalies in strategy.

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Could you tell us about some of the key ideas

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in the article?

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<v ->Yeah, so I think what we</v>

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were bringing to the fore

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is the fact that detecting trends early enough

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to still be a competitive advantage

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and still be early enough to act on it is really important.

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And it's equal part art and science.

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There's a role for creativity and imagination,

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a necessary role to even be asking the right questions.

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And there's also a role for the latest technology

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to be able to mine all the relevant sources of information

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to tell you when you should be looking at something

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and when something interesting is happening.

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<v ->I remember we had a discussion</v>

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about the difference between just a regular anomaly,

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just a blip, and a poignant anomaly,

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and anomaly that points to possibility.

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How do you know if your anomaly points to possibility?

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<v ->Right, there's just so much noise to manage.</v>

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And so we have a framework for thinking

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about how to identify when something is just a blip

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and when something is gonna persist.

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And one factor is momentum,

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what's the trend behind this?

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There's mathematical models that we use

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to understand if it's going to persist.

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There's the robustness of the observation,

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do you witness something happening from multiple angles?

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It's no longer enough to see a trend

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in one source of information.

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You can look at it in multiple ways.

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And then the third factor is the impact

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that it's going to have in the world,

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and in particular to your business.

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<v ->Well, thanks so much for spending time with us, Bob,</v>

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sharing your ideas on imagination.

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<v ->Pleasure, thanks Martin.</v>