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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.

John Kao

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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
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More quotes by John Kao

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The impresario functions as a bridge and a translator. He or she is a bridge between the creative point of view - which is often very focused on the creative task itself - and the resource-allocation process. The impresario has to make certain the funds and people required to get that task completed are available.
John Kao
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Organizations are about putting ideas through one or more types of gating procedures. In this way, ideas go from being a whim to becoming a project, from being a skunk works effort to becoming an official, mainstream effort, from being an unfounded program to a funded process, and so on.
John Kao
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Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.
John Kao
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The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.
John Kao
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The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.
John Kao
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The manager's job - the impresario's job - is to preside over the company's efforts to jam so the business runs really well.
John Kao
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Jazz musicians can be great teachers of business. Their creativity is not dependent on their mood, it does not have to be coaxed out of them, it has nothing to do with the phases of the moon or even how they feel that day. They go on stage and start playing. Being creative is their job.
John Kao
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You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to perform at their highest levels.
John Kao
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The conventional asset-allocation method is like sheet music. It is prescribed, it has right answers and wrong answers and it sounds about the same every time. But jamming is different. Jamming is when you make the music. When you improvise and adapt to conditions. When you are creative.
John Kao
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People must get respect for their new ideas.
John Kao
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Creativity is not like the weather: You can do something about it. And you can measure it well enough to determine its effect on sales and profits.
John Kao
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Managing the creative process means selecting the best people and then letting them do their work. That means nurturing. It also means, from time to time, creating drama - even uncertainty - so that the creative environment has an edge to it, a charge, and does not run out of steam.
John Kao
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The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick artists and relate to them. People who know what the market craves.
John Kao
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All of these creative ideas and decisions about new ways to reach the consumer can be tracked with regard to how well they are working, whether and how they are building awareness for the product, how well they motivate the consumption of the product, and so on.
John Kao
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In the end it is the musician who actually plays the notes. The impresario - or the project leader - is only there to make sure that happens. That is a very different type of management mind-set.
John Kao
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Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.
John Kao
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The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
John Kao
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You need judgment, you need to utilize conventional resource-allocation analysis, you have to work backward from estimations of the market to the current investments and you have to do some benchmarking of your product and its potential against your competition.
John Kao
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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
John Kao
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Obviously businesses do not operate like an artists' commune. Business involves deploying finite resources to achieve goals in a competitive environment to make money. That is something creative people understand.
John Kao