The dearth of useful new ideas is currently deplored. It is not sufficient that a theme should be appropriate, in both cases it has to be characterized by originality. Originality, however imaginative, does not necessarily carry such a challenge. Unfortunately in the case of policy-making, the most challenged have been those in developing and former socialist countries, not those in the industrialized countries responsible for the elaboration of modern policy skills. Insight capture and control Neither works of art nor policies are formulated in a vacuum.
Insight capture is therefore an important process.
Artists are renowned for bathing in reality to soak up such insights. Poetry continually strives to refine experience of ordinary events and make them extraordinary. It is a way of establishing historical continuity and precedent. This may of course be all they do. It is an important feature of any policy.