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If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the challenge can be both large and subtle.

John Kao

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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Challenge
Come
Bottom
Large
Contribution
Products
Subtle
Line
Product
Challenges
Easily
Lines
Track
Often

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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.
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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.
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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.
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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.
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The head of a record label sets up structures, but he also defines the sound of the label, which is to describe what is desirable, what fits and what is quality for that label and then to create an environment where that sound can thrive.
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Jamming - which follows rules but not individual notes - gives you a different result each time, depending upon the players and the conditions in which they find themselves. It is adaptable to changing conditions.
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The capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not successful.
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People must get respect for their new ideas.
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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.
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The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
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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.
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The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
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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.
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Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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