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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.

John Kao

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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
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Structure
Structures
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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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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 capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not successful.
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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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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 imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
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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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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 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 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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People must get respect for their new ideas.
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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.
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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.
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The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.
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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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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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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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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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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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