Author Description

Review Corporate jazz sessions for the creative age. From America's renascent rust belt to the heart of Silicon Valley, from Tokyo to Sao Paolo, companies that are moving forward today share one important characteristic: they thrive on creativity. While the traditional pursuit of new capital, raw materials, and more efficient technologies continues, the competitive advantage belongs to businesses that recognize the value of imagination, inspiration, ingenuity, and initiative. In Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, John Kao uses the metaphor of the jazz musicians'jam session, the lively, unpredictable blending of structure and improvisation, to describe how any company can foster, manage, and reap the benefits of creativity. He pinpoints those factors from the explosion of sophisticated new technologies to the increasing pressure on companies to reinvent themselves rapidly that make creativity management essential. This is the first book to view business creativity as a managerial system, not as mere idea generation. It presents a practical methodology for auditing a company's creative capabilities and translating the findings into a plan of action. Arguing that fresh notes are rarely heard in companies that have been playing the same tune for years, Kao cites some off-beat ways to encourage employees to clear their minds, refocus their attention, and listen for new sounds to emerge. The Chairman of Coca-Cola, for example, provokes his employees to new ways of thinking by giving speeches that mock Coke's cherished corporate culture; Global Business Network conjures up newspaper headlines from the future to stimulate alternative thinking among its corporate clients; and Andersen Consulting depends on a team of hackers to learn what's happening on the frontiers of computer technology. -- From the Publisher Product Description A detailed introduction to the field of corporate creativity analyzes the vocabulary and grammar of creativ