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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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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Doe
Drama
Managing
Best
Creating
Nurturing
Mean
Environment
Steam
Even
Creative
Charge
Work
Process
Letting
Time
Means
Uncertainty
People
Running
Edge
Also
Edges
Selecting

More quotes by 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.
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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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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.
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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
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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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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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People must get respect for their new ideas.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Coca-Cola can get really fresh output because it is getting people who are outside the traditional model and they are combining ideas in very novel ways.
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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