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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.
John Kao
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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
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Impresario
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More quotes by John Kao
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 creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
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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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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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A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.
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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 traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
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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 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 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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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 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 imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
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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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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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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 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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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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