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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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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Time
Accommodate
Contradictory
Developed
Intellect
Mark
Two
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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The larger the price tag, the more you have to adopt what I call the postmodern management approach. What I mean by that is that you have to use everything when you make a decision.
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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 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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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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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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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 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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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 traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
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People must get respect for their new ideas.
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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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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 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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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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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 imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
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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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The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.
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