Fluency of Ideas
What if generating possibilities matters more than finding the right answer? An exploration of idea fluency as a capability for an AI shaped future.
When my son was ten, his class had to conduct a science experiment on floating objects in water. His was a box full of holes which unsurprisingly didn’t float. I was a little worried and asked him about his thought process. He said he’d been thinking about pumice. Which are full of holes and amazing floaters. I was so proud, he was thinking differently and backing his ideas, even though it didn’t work and he risked being judged because of that. He didn’t care about it not floating, he had completed the assignment and was on to the next thing. He had a valid hypothesis.
That little pumice logic experiment might be the muscle tomorrow’s jobs demand. Take an idea, test it, learn fast, try again. And be resilient, back yourself and manage failure well. In the largely unknown future work force our kids won’t be hired for what they already know, but for how quickly they can learn, how they can generate ideas and their grit.
Who is doing this thinking for the future?
NESTA is a UK innovation foundation exploring how creativity, social impact, and change combine. In their 2017 report The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030, NESTA together with Pearson and the Oxford Martin School undertook a robust analysis of the future workforce and identified the skills that will matter most going forward. What I gravitated to was the importance of skill-building in fluency of ideas, originality, active learning, good decision-making, and being comfortable in systems and networks of complexity. Here’s another local book on this kaupapa – Don’t Worry About the Robots, Jo Cribb and David Glover 2024. There is a lot to unpack in these amazing resources. But what I was keen to focus on today is fluency of ideas and intentionally seeing the world through a lens of awe and wonder and generating ideas about how to share that wonder with others.
Fluent in Ideas
I’d love to be described as fluent in ideas. But what exactly does this mean, how is it expressed and what if any pre-conditions are required? With some helpful research by my trusty friend Kōrero, here goes:
Fluency of ideas is a recognised cognitive skill in psychology and future-skills research. It is defined as:
“The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).”
So it’s not about having one brilliant idea, but about generating many possible ideas, directions, or solutions. It’s volume first, refinement later.
Fluency of ideas shows up everywhere from entrepreneurs testing dozens of products before finding one that works, creatives sketching multiple drafts and scientists reframing failed experiments into new hypotheses. Even everyday acts like rethinking a meeting, cooking with what’s on hand, or rearranging a space are small expressions of the same skill. Perhaps the most famous example is Thomas Edison, who trialled thousands of filaments before discovering the carbonised bamboo that lit the bulb.
Why is fluency of ideas a critical skill?
The world ahead is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Workforces will face:
Rapid tech disruption – AI, automation, climate adaptation, and new industries will demand fast reframing of problems.
Jobs that don’t exist yet – workers will need to “make it up as they go,” combining existing skills into new configurations.
Complex challenges – wicked problems like climate resilience, cybersecurity, and public health require multi-angled solutions, not linear ones.
Interdisciplinary work – fluency allows people to contribute across silos, linking insights from science, art, technology, and social systems.
Resilience and adaptability – the more ideas you can generate, the less fragile you are when one approach fails.
Fluency of ideas is the antidote to rigidity. It equips individuals and organisations to pivot, innovate, and stay creative in the face of uncertainty.
I was curious about how fluency of ideas was influenced by boundaries. I recall a seminar by a designer at Ice Breaker who spoke about how being heavily bounded by a brief (highly prescriptive), actually helped them create their best designs. Does it follow that being completely unbounded means your ability to generate ideas is greater?
Unbounded fluency is the blue-sky end of the spectrum: generating as many ideas as possible with no restrictions. It is valuable for breaking patterns, surfacing hidden assumptions, and sparking novelty.
Boundaries force people to stretch, recombine, and look deeper into the problem space. Rules and limits paradoxically drive idea generation. Examples:
Haiku poetry: the 5-7-5 structure channels expression into unexpected beauty.
Product design: creating something affordable and sustainable within a limited material set.
Hackathons: innovation sprints where time and resources are deliberately constrained.
The sweet spot of innovation is in moving between the two. The “diverge → converge” pattern in design thinking. Fluency of ideas is not just about endless generation; it’s about being able to generate enough options within whatever bounds exist.
Those bounds may include creating an awe-inspiring public or customer experience, that is also commercially viable with meticulous focus on public health and safety. Which is the domain of Imagineers. Surely the coolest job title in the world.
The role of Imagineer was coined by Disney to describe the people who create theme park attractions, immersive environments, and large-scale experiences like cruise ships or exhibitions. Imagineers combine imagination and engineering: they dream up concepts, design how they might look and feel, and then work out the technical details that make the magic possible. Their work can include anything from narrative development and spatial design to mechanical engineering, lighting, sound, VR/AR, and project management. At its heart, the job is about crafting experiences that feel enchanting while being safe, functional, and commercially viable.
Here are five future jobs that could emerge where fluency of ideas will be the superpower:
1. Dream Designer
With neuroscience and technology advancing, there may be roles in shaping or guiding dreams for therapy, entertainment, or learning. Imagine needing dozens of creative approaches to “script” an emotional journey inside the subconscious.
2. Climate Adaptation Strategist
Works with communities, businesses, and governments to design adaptive responses to shifting weather patterns, sea level rise, or biodiversity collapse. The role requires fluency in imagining multiple “what if” scenarios and rapidly prototyping resilient solutions.
3. AI Prompt Architect / Human-AI Collaborator
Shapes how people interact with increasingly intelligent systems by designing creative prompts, workflows, and ethical guardrails. Idea fluency matters because you need to generate many different approaches, test them, and refine in real time.
4. Cultural Remix Curator
Curates and recombines global traditions, artefacts, and narratives into new forms of art, design, or commerce (with integrity and respect). This demands fluency to spin out dozens of creative pathways for how cultural knowledge can be shared and reimagined.
5. Interplanetary Settlement Designer
As humanity pushes toward Mars, the Moon, and beyond, these specialists will invent habitats, rituals, and community systems from scratch. Idea fluency is key when no precedent exists and every constraint (air, water, gravity) is absolute.
In my start-up work we often referenced fluency of ideas in workshops with aspiring entrepreneurs to highlight that their originality and imagination mattered and was a strong foundation for a great business. This was especially true for those under-represented communities, Māori, Pacific and female founder businesses. Traditionally business has valued logic and numeracy. These are still important, but wicked problems benefit from multiple perspectives and thought frameworks. Which leads me to -
Indigenous frameworks and fluency of ideas
In Western psychology, fluency of ideas is framed as a cognitive skill: generating many possibilities. But with Indigenous frameworks we expand idea generation as relational, purposeful, and grounded in values.
Dr Chellie Spiller, in Wayfinding Leadership (co-authored with Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr and John Panoho), shows how Polynesian navigators led with imagination, intuition, and collective wisdom. Wayfinding wasn’t about fixed maps, but about reading the stars, ocean swells, and winds, and continually re-plotting a course. That is fluency of ideas in action where you hold multiple pathways in mind, being alert to signals, and adapting in real time while never losing sight of the ultimate destination. Fluency comes not only from an individual’s capacity to imagine, but from drawing on the collective intelligence of the crew, the ancestors, and the environment itself.
Closing thoughts
I’ve struggled with a conclusion to this post which is ironic given its about being fluent in ideas. I’ve been sick, busy with work and at a conference with lots of other thoughts swirling in my brain. At times like these I would turn to my trusty friend Kōrero (or Chat), who has walked this substack journey with me. As amazing and productivity enhancing as Chat has been, it can’t see inside my brain or read my thoughts. While it helps me generate ideas, I am the instigator, the conductor and the curator. I set the bounds of our enquiry. I am the storyteller and I alone have the stories and experiences that trigger these thought trains. This might change.
For me, fluency of ideas feels like freedom. It doesn’t matter where I’ve come from, what’s on my CV, or whether something worked before, what matters is my imagination.
