Jamming
Art and Discipline of Business Creativit
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Renowned business authority John Kao demystifies creativity by comparing it to jazz. Kao reveals how managers can unleash creativity in their employees by freeing them of preconceptions, engaging their interest, and then guiding them toward a goal. He uses specific examples from companies such as the ultimate creativity-driven boutique, DreamWorks SKG, to Coc-Cola, at the heart of the Fortune 500. Recognizing that creativity is going mainstream, he takes us to such creativity superstars as Senco Systems and explores the impact of information technology on creativity, examining Verifone and First Virtual Corporation. And he looks at the globalization of creativity through the experience of such intellectual giants as Shiseido and Renault.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It took a Chinese American student listening to jazz and jamming with a group of African Americans at a private boarding school to internalize the polar tensions between musical score and improvisation and come up with a formula for creativity. Kao, now a professor at Harvard Business School, has been using the jamming metaphor to teach creative entrepreneurship for 14 years. In business, the score is not a musical theme but an idea, process or question that takes on new dimensions when bandied about by a group. This business version of jamming, Kao says, is the creative advantage that can give a company a competitive edge. Kao tells how to audit and manage creativity and describes techniques for clearing the mind to render it receptive to the improvisational flow. Never was the need or the opportunity so great, he claims, as now amid the deluge of information descending from cyberspace. Chapters end with a list of "riffs," or pithy tips for business leaders. Kao offers succinct advice cleverly packaged.
