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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.

John Kao

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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Work
Potential
Resource
Competition
Backward
Market
Conventional
Judgment
Current
Resources
Currents
Allocation
Products
Analysis
Utilize
Need
Product
Estimation
Needs
Investment
Investments

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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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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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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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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 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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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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The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
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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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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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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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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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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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The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
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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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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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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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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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