Understanding the Role of Collective Imaginary in the Dynamics of Expectations: The Space Industry Case Study

The main objective of this study attempts to contribute to a growing body of research in the understanding of innovation and technological development. When addressing radical changes in technology and innovation, ideas derived from expectations and promises have become key issues in transforming a vision into reality. Thus, our paper aims to investigate the dynamics of expectations and its relationship to the collective imaginary when applied to the space industry. The space industry is one of the most exemplary cases to study the dynamics of social expectations (i.e. space observation, space exploration, the conquest of space, and etc.) and it has clearly been considered as a strong stimulus for design efforts. In order to illustrate the processes involved with fulfilling the design of new visions and innovative promises, we use the most recent models of design reasoning (C-K theory) to support our hypothesis.