The power of daydreaming: the aesthetic act of a new beginning

Abstract

What can we learn from a better understanding of the process of daydreaming in an organizational context? That is the main question underpinning this study. Based on a field study with a rural entrepreneur that uses daydreaming as her main strategic tool in the development of her farm, and a reading of Bachelard’s work on the phenomenology of ‘reverie,’ we come to understand daydreaming as an embodied act that emerges at the intersection between relational materiality, vertical temporality and aesthetic space. This conceptualization of daydreaming reminds us that rather than focusing on how to make dreams come true, which is the traditional way of relating to dreams in organizational life, there is a need to enable people to dream anew, because that is when new beginnings can be born, and the particular will to act, through daydreaming, can be released.