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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
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Best
Creating
Nurturing
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Steam
Even
Creative
Charge
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Letting
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Uncertainty
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More quotes by 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.
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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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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.
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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.
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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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The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.
John Kao
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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 traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
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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 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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The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
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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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