Successful business people approach their problems creatively.
Chapter 1 from Creativity in Business by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers.
http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/ray/bio.html
Are you starting your first post-graduation job? Manage your expectations and make sure that you’re ready to adapt to reality. Make the right first impression and handle every situation with confidence, resilience and professionalism. Put the right foot forward and find workplace success.
Every single organization on the planet, even our own careers, always function on three levels. What we do, How we do it and Why we do it.
When all those pieces are aligned, it gives us a filter through which to make decisions. It provides a foundation for innovation. When all three pieces are in balance, others will say, with absolute clarity and certainty,
“We know who you are,” “We know what you stand for.”
Whether they realize it or not, all great and inspiring leaders and organizations think, act and communicate just like each other…and it’s the complete opposite from everyone else.
Whether you’re in your first year of university or your last, the time to start planning your career is now. Learn how to prepare and make the most of your time at university in 8 steps, so that by the time you’re ready to graduate, you’re ready to launch straight into a successful career.
From learning how to decide what type of job, employer and workplace you want, to how to sell yourself and make valuable connections by networking, these tips will help uni students and graduates be prepared for the world of work and to find their place within it.
Planning for a successful career never stops. Once you’ve taken the 8 steps listed here, there are a number of other resources you can check out further advice on USQ’s Social Hub and USQ’s career resource centre, Career Hub.
The 5 Types of Sales People and Their Dog Equivalent. Randy Hilarski
Over a decade ago I read an amazing book by Robert Kiyosaki and his Rich Dad Poor Dad team. This is my presentation to the Founders Institute Panama Entrepreneur class about sales.
We all have a specific personality type in sales. What type of sales person are you? Feel free to use this presentation with your people.
The Challenger Sale Model is a transformation imperative for every organization and needs to be embedded in the sales force . The book explains how to deliver a differentiates selling experience that delivers higher level of partner loyalty and growth . This is a summary of my key takeaways and by no means does justice to all the tools and techniques to reframe customer conversations to make them impactful and memorable
Talent Imitates, Genius Steals: Four Chapters on Being Creative in the Digita...edward boches
Thoughts on being creative and finding inspiration. Four chapters: creativity matters more than ever; there's no such thing as an original idea; learn to steal and remix; dissect the formulas in ideas that work. I should note that while the statement in this title has been attributed to Picasso, Oscar Wilde and others, I stole it from Faris Yakob, who has used it for years. Thank you, Faris.
The Evolution of Recognition: And 3 Truths that Will Never Change
O.C. Tanner, number 40 on the 2015 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® list, helps organizations create great work environments by inspiring and appreciating great work. Thousands of clients globally use the company’s cloud-based technology, tools, awards, and education services to engage talent, increase performance, drive goals, and create experiences that fuel the human spirit.
Are you starting your first post-graduation job? Manage your expectations and make sure that you’re ready to adapt to reality. Make the right first impression and handle every situation with confidence, resilience and professionalism. Put the right foot forward and find workplace success.
Every single organization on the planet, even our own careers, always function on three levels. What we do, How we do it and Why we do it.
When all those pieces are aligned, it gives us a filter through which to make decisions. It provides a foundation for innovation. When all three pieces are in balance, others will say, with absolute clarity and certainty,
“We know who you are,” “We know what you stand for.”
Whether they realize it or not, all great and inspiring leaders and organizations think, act and communicate just like each other…and it’s the complete opposite from everyone else.
Whether you’re in your first year of university or your last, the time to start planning your career is now. Learn how to prepare and make the most of your time at university in 8 steps, so that by the time you’re ready to graduate, you’re ready to launch straight into a successful career.
From learning how to decide what type of job, employer and workplace you want, to how to sell yourself and make valuable connections by networking, these tips will help uni students and graduates be prepared for the world of work and to find their place within it.
Planning for a successful career never stops. Once you’ve taken the 8 steps listed here, there are a number of other resources you can check out further advice on USQ’s Social Hub and USQ’s career resource centre, Career Hub.
The 5 Types of Sales People and Their Dog Equivalent. Randy Hilarski
Over a decade ago I read an amazing book by Robert Kiyosaki and his Rich Dad Poor Dad team. This is my presentation to the Founders Institute Panama Entrepreneur class about sales.
We all have a specific personality type in sales. What type of sales person are you? Feel free to use this presentation with your people.
The Challenger Sale Model is a transformation imperative for every organization and needs to be embedded in the sales force . The book explains how to deliver a differentiates selling experience that delivers higher level of partner loyalty and growth . This is a summary of my key takeaways and by no means does justice to all the tools and techniques to reframe customer conversations to make them impactful and memorable
Talent Imitates, Genius Steals: Four Chapters on Being Creative in the Digita...edward boches
Thoughts on being creative and finding inspiration. Four chapters: creativity matters more than ever; there's no such thing as an original idea; learn to steal and remix; dissect the formulas in ideas that work. I should note that while the statement in this title has been attributed to Picasso, Oscar Wilde and others, I stole it from Faris Yakob, who has used it for years. Thank you, Faris.
The Evolution of Recognition: And 3 Truths that Will Never Change
O.C. Tanner, number 40 on the 2015 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® list, helps organizations create great work environments by inspiring and appreciating great work. Thousands of clients globally use the company’s cloud-based technology, tools, awards, and education services to engage talent, increase performance, drive goals, and create experiences that fuel the human spirit.
True commercial insight is hard to create. It requires an intensive study of your ideal customer. Once it is created, salespeople must learn how to sell differently (consultatively) and sales managers have a role to play in changing behavior.
This presentation uses ideas from "The Challenger Customer" to illustrate why true commercial insight is so important. It discusses a way to capture commercial insight and convert that into a visual story or whiteboard to enable salespeople to challenge status-quo thinking and create new opportunities through story and conversation - not presentation.
Storytelling isn’t just for children! Strategic storytelling in sales, or “storyselling” is a proven way to build trust, boost-buy in and maximize memory to get your message remembered and repeated.
In an age where the social customer has risen to new heights, customer support teams have been required to adjust to meet the needs of their customer base more than ever. For Desk.com, our team strives to provide what we like to call: "Customer WOW"
The real Customer WOW happens when you combine empathy and understanding for the challenge the customer is facing, identify and resolve the issue with skill (and bonus points for style), and drive and scale that learning back into the organization. Desk.com's Customer WOW team has taken it upon themselves to divulge some of the deep secrets of how to achieve these results. Check out their 13 principles to providing Customer WOW.
Curious about Desk.com? Download this free kit to get started: http://bit.ly/FreeCustomerServiceKit
Find Your Why For Groups - The Agile South Coast Tribe Why, Feb 2019Steven Mackenzie
In his 2009 TED Talk (and 2011 book) "Start With Why" Simon Sinek told us that when we consciously start with "Why?" we can communicate more effectively and make better choices. Understanding and communicating our organisation's "Why" becomes important in our work when we encourage autonomy for teams to make decisions because we expect those decisions to be aligned with the strategies, goals and purpose of our organisation.
Discovering and stating our purpose, as individuals or as groups, can be difficult though. The parts of our brain that drive our motivation and emotional choices are not the parts of our brain that are competent with language. This session uses a tested format to help us uncover the underlying purpose of our organisation.
The workshop format comes from the book "Find Your Why", by Peter Docker and David Mead, co-authored with Simon Sinek. It outlines 2 separate processes, for either individuals or for organisations, to understand and describe the purpose that drives them. In this workshop we will use the exercise for organisations to explore the format, using "Agile South Coast" as the organisation that we can all identify with.
Visit us at gykantler.com for more information.
The concept of a “brand” is no longer taboo at B2B companies. In fact, strong B2B brands outperform weaker ones by as much as 20%, according to recent research by McKinsey. Yet it’s not easy for ROI-obsessed marketers to justify spending money on their brand, which can be difficult to track. As a result, your brand is too often left either underfunded or on the back-burner altogether.
We’re going to help you solve this. In this presentation you’ll learn:
- How your brand can boost demand generation and other key performance indicators
- The elements of a B2B brand and how those are different from traditional consumer branding
- How to elevate your brand through B2B marketing channels and brand advocates
- Metrics to track the impact of your brand
What do people use a service for? What problem are they trying to solve? This edition of Service Design Drinks introduced to a tool based on the increasingly popular jobs-to-be-done framework. It helps you to better understand problems with a fresh approach by examining contexts and describing desired outcomes.
This edition’s presenters Thomas Hütter, Hannes Jentsch and Martin Jordan are system and experience designers at HERE, a Nokia business. In the past year they reviewed the internal design processes and explored new tools that are worth sharing.
The Good Brief - a no-frills guide to writing creative briefsKam Fatt Chen
A simple, no-nonsense guide to writing creative briefs that work. Complete with tips, pointers and cheat sheets to help you focus and distill the things that really to write an effective creative brief.
Frank Underwood's Lessons For Digital MarketersMonetate
Despite being perhaps the most Machiavellian of all pop culture characters this century has seen, Frank Underwood ( Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards character) can be a guiding voice for digital marketers.
And in celebration of tonight's Emmy Awards, here are five lessons—straight from Frank's mouth to your screen.
An Introduction to The Challenger Customer [Pat Spenner, CEB]Quarry
Pat Spenner, co-author of The Challenger Customer presented to animal health marketing and sales professionals at NAVC 2016 about the changing landscape of B2B buying.
"From Design Thinking to Design Doing" Suzanne Pellican's presentation from the O'Reilly Design conference on January 21, 2016 at Fort Mason in San Francisco, CA.
Steve Thompson, VP Enterprise Application Solutions & Alliances, Johnson Controls Inc.
From the 2010 Responsible Supply Chains Conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/scforum/ser/conference
For more resources from previous years:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/scforum/ser/conference/resources.html
True commercial insight is hard to create. It requires an intensive study of your ideal customer. Once it is created, salespeople must learn how to sell differently (consultatively) and sales managers have a role to play in changing behavior.
This presentation uses ideas from "The Challenger Customer" to illustrate why true commercial insight is so important. It discusses a way to capture commercial insight and convert that into a visual story or whiteboard to enable salespeople to challenge status-quo thinking and create new opportunities through story and conversation - not presentation.
Storytelling isn’t just for children! Strategic storytelling in sales, or “storyselling” is a proven way to build trust, boost-buy in and maximize memory to get your message remembered and repeated.
In an age where the social customer has risen to new heights, customer support teams have been required to adjust to meet the needs of their customer base more than ever. For Desk.com, our team strives to provide what we like to call: "Customer WOW"
The real Customer WOW happens when you combine empathy and understanding for the challenge the customer is facing, identify and resolve the issue with skill (and bonus points for style), and drive and scale that learning back into the organization. Desk.com's Customer WOW team has taken it upon themselves to divulge some of the deep secrets of how to achieve these results. Check out their 13 principles to providing Customer WOW.
Curious about Desk.com? Download this free kit to get started: http://bit.ly/FreeCustomerServiceKit
Find Your Why For Groups - The Agile South Coast Tribe Why, Feb 2019Steven Mackenzie
In his 2009 TED Talk (and 2011 book) "Start With Why" Simon Sinek told us that when we consciously start with "Why?" we can communicate more effectively and make better choices. Understanding and communicating our organisation's "Why" becomes important in our work when we encourage autonomy for teams to make decisions because we expect those decisions to be aligned with the strategies, goals and purpose of our organisation.
Discovering and stating our purpose, as individuals or as groups, can be difficult though. The parts of our brain that drive our motivation and emotional choices are not the parts of our brain that are competent with language. This session uses a tested format to help us uncover the underlying purpose of our organisation.
The workshop format comes from the book "Find Your Why", by Peter Docker and David Mead, co-authored with Simon Sinek. It outlines 2 separate processes, for either individuals or for organisations, to understand and describe the purpose that drives them. In this workshop we will use the exercise for organisations to explore the format, using "Agile South Coast" as the organisation that we can all identify with.
Visit us at gykantler.com for more information.
The concept of a “brand” is no longer taboo at B2B companies. In fact, strong B2B brands outperform weaker ones by as much as 20%, according to recent research by McKinsey. Yet it’s not easy for ROI-obsessed marketers to justify spending money on their brand, which can be difficult to track. As a result, your brand is too often left either underfunded or on the back-burner altogether.
We’re going to help you solve this. In this presentation you’ll learn:
- How your brand can boost demand generation and other key performance indicators
- The elements of a B2B brand and how those are different from traditional consumer branding
- How to elevate your brand through B2B marketing channels and brand advocates
- Metrics to track the impact of your brand
What do people use a service for? What problem are they trying to solve? This edition of Service Design Drinks introduced to a tool based on the increasingly popular jobs-to-be-done framework. It helps you to better understand problems with a fresh approach by examining contexts and describing desired outcomes.
This edition’s presenters Thomas Hütter, Hannes Jentsch and Martin Jordan are system and experience designers at HERE, a Nokia business. In the past year they reviewed the internal design processes and explored new tools that are worth sharing.
The Good Brief - a no-frills guide to writing creative briefsKam Fatt Chen
A simple, no-nonsense guide to writing creative briefs that work. Complete with tips, pointers and cheat sheets to help you focus and distill the things that really to write an effective creative brief.
Frank Underwood's Lessons For Digital MarketersMonetate
Despite being perhaps the most Machiavellian of all pop culture characters this century has seen, Frank Underwood ( Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards character) can be a guiding voice for digital marketers.
And in celebration of tonight's Emmy Awards, here are five lessons—straight from Frank's mouth to your screen.
An Introduction to The Challenger Customer [Pat Spenner, CEB]Quarry
Pat Spenner, co-author of The Challenger Customer presented to animal health marketing and sales professionals at NAVC 2016 about the changing landscape of B2B buying.
"From Design Thinking to Design Doing" Suzanne Pellican's presentation from the O'Reilly Design conference on January 21, 2016 at Fort Mason in San Francisco, CA.
Steve Thompson, VP Enterprise Application Solutions & Alliances, Johnson Controls Inc.
From the 2010 Responsible Supply Chains Conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/scforum/ser/conference
For more resources from previous years:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/scforum/ser/conference/resources.html
At a recent Stanford GSB "Nuts & Bolts" talk, Lecturer Robert Siegel (MBA '94) shared insights on hiring and compensating employees at a startup.
Follow Lecturer Siegel on Twitter: @RobSiegel
Innovation can mean many things. What is the most effective way to bring innovation to your organization? Stanford d.school's Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley will discuss how to routinely innovate in your job.
Jack Ma, the founder of China's most profitable e-commerce company Alibaba Group, made his last public speech at Stanford University on May 4th, 2013 before stepping down as CEO. In his talk, Ma discussed why embracing change is critical for global leaders managing the fast turnover of technology.
Watch the video of his talk: http://stnfd.biz/mZA0o
The event was co-hosted by Alibaba Group and the Stanford Graduate School of Business's Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE): http://stnfd.biz/mZA2S
This presentation was part of a Week 0 class called "How Neuroscience Influences Human Behavior" at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The class was co-taught by Marketing Professor Baba Shiv and Nir Eyal (Stanford MBA '08, blog: http://www.nirandfar.com)
Dean Garth Saloner provides an overview of Stanford GSB's achievements and opportunities for advancing the school's core mission of creating ideas that deepen and advance our understanding of management and with those ideas developing innovative, principled, and insightful leaders who change the world.
Watch the video: stanford.io/1s5jUJb
Professor Jennifer Aaker and venture capitalist David Hornik explore the importance of stories in fueling growth and innovation in your company as well as the role of stories in shaping how others view your brand
Explore key takeaways shared in our Stanford GSB View From The Top guest speaker series this year.
More leadership insights: http://stanford.io/leadership
Can art learn from sports? 2 business cases to explain!Gijsbregt Brouwer
For a class full of managers and CEO's in the world of art, I presented 2 business cases from sports. How does sport open up new markets and new revenue streams and could art do the same? Case by Nike and about concept runs.
Monetizing Audience Engagement, A Love StoryTRG Arts
Isn’t it funny that we use the term “engagement” to describe audience interaction with our organizations? The word can mean ‘get together” -- a meeting or visit. It can also mean commitment as in promise to marry. As that range of definition implies, and two decades of arts consumer research shows, engagement has the plot lines of a love story.
Take, for instance, that first engagement with a new audience member who has never before walked into your organization’s life. Their doing so is the culmination of a flirtation –or first date -- that might end up being a one-night stand or the beginning of a long-lasting relationship that imparts value (money) by both parties. Your organization’s understanding of patrons – especially those you’ve worked hard to bring in the first time –is part of the script. You write a happy ending or tear-jerker, depending on what you do.
"Monetizing Audience Engagement, A Love Story" was presented at the Arts Reach National Arts Marketing, Development, and Ticketing Conference in San Francisco, CA, where TRG Arts’ veteran patron loyalty consultant Keri Mesropov and Director of Network Programs David Seals compared standard ways of relationship-building to the happily-ever-after best practices that are sustaining smart arts organizations.
A keynote by Andrew Taylor, Director, Bolz Center for Arts Administration, Wisconsin School of Business, for the 2011 Arts Enterprise Summit in Kansas City, MO.
Las nuevas tecnologías permiten a las personas con discapacidad visual y auditiva disfrutar en igualdad de condiciones de la oferta audiovisual disponible para el resto de ciudadanos.
Slides from Wayne Hodgins presentation to the San Francisco Bay Area Manufacturing User Group (BAMUG) on Oct.16, 2007. See Off Course - On Target at www.autodesk.com/waynehodgins for a full write up and more.
slides from Wayne Hodgins's presentation to the San Francisco Bay Area Manufacturing User Group (BAMUG) meeting Oct. 16, 2007. See Off Course - On Target at www.autodesk.com/waynehodgins for more
New Models of Purpose-Driven Exploration in Knowledge WorkWilliam Evans
The last 20 years have been a period of radical disruption and transformation in knowledge work. The "why, what, and how" of new value creation and delivery in knowledge-intensive work is shifting and the power has moved from the center to the edges. In his talk, Evans will explore the emergence of new methods of exploration, abductive ideation, and empirical validation that is changing how value creation happens. The very idea first introduced by Buckminster Fuller, when he said that everything was becoming ephemeralized—doing "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing"—or more recently when Marc Andreessen said, "software is eating the world," has had a direct impact on information-seeking and information-synthesizing behaviors. Evans will unpack how many of these models and methods are really the exaptation of Lean, Systems Thinking, and Design Thinking principles, transplanted from the world of manufacturing into the ephemeral world of knowledge work and knowledge management. He'll finish by showing how these models can frame the challenges posed by sense-making (experiential) change in knowledge work.
Will Evans explores the convergence of practice and theory using Lean Systems, Design Thinking, Theory of Constraints, and Service Design with global enterprises from NYC to Berlin to Singapore. As Chief Design Officer, he works with a select group of clients undergoing Lean and Agile transformations across the entire organization. Will earned his Jonah® from AGI, and serves on the Board of Advisors for Rutgers CX (Customer Experience) Program. Formerly, he was Design Thinker-In-Residence at NYU Stern.
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
Francesca Gottschalk - How can education support child empowerment.pptxEduSkills OECD
Francesca Gottschalk from the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation presents at the Ask an Expert Webinar: How can education support child empowerment?
Acetabularia Information For Class 9 .docxvaibhavrinwa19
Acetabularia acetabulum is a single-celled green alga that in its vegetative state is morphologically differentiated into a basal rhizoid and an axially elongated stalk, which bears whorls of branching hairs. The single diploid nucleus resides in the rhizoid.
Read| The latest issue of The Challenger is here! We are thrilled to announce that our school paper has qualified for the NATIONAL SCHOOLS PRESS CONFERENCE (NSPC) 2024. Thank you for your unwavering support and trust. Dive into the stories that made us stand out!
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
Normal Labour/ Stages of Labour/ Mechanism of LabourWasim Ak
Normal labor is also termed spontaneous labor, defined as the natural physiological process through which the fetus, placenta, and membranes are expelled from the uterus through the birth canal at term (37 to 42 weeks
Business as Art by Stanford Business Professor Michael Ray
1. 1
BUSINESS AS ART
The uncreative life isn’t worth living.
Ted Nierenberg
Founder
Dansk International Designs, Ltd.
Creativity is within everyone. That is a redly wild statement. ButI redly
think it’s true.
Rene McPherson
Former CEO
Dana Industries
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Business is my art.
Robert Marcus
CEO, Alumax, Inc.
For most people, the word creativity is more easily applicable to art than to
business. You expect the Picassos of the world to experience creative
breakthroughs, but are less convinced that business people have anything to
be creative about.
But a wise man has said, “Art is basically the production oforder out of
chaos,” and isn’t chaos the natural environment of business?
In speaking to our class, Wayne Van Dyck, founder of Windfarms, Ltd.
and several other enterprises, had this to say:
The highest artform is really business. It is an extremely creativeform
and can be more creative than all the things we classically think of as
creative. In business, the tools with which you’re working are dynamic:
capital and people and markets and ideas. (These tools) all have lives of
their own. So to take those things and to work with them and reorganize
them in new and diferent ways turns out to be a very creativeprocess.
2. 4 ESSENCE
Dozens of course speakers and hundreds of MBA and Sloan Manage-
ment students and workshop participants have confirmed over and over
again that successful business people approach their problems creatively.
They might not verbalize in terms of art, but they express in myriad ways
the same approach that artists do: They become totally immersed in ex-
pressing their inner visions, knowing that their chief challenge is to or-
ganize familiar materials in a fresh way. They are curious, adventurous,
experimental, willing to take risks, and they are absorbed in meeting the
challenges of their working day.
But even if the regeneration and sustenance of American business has
been due to such creative individuals throughout its history, how does this
relate to you now? The answer is that you too can contribute creatively, and
by developing your own inherent creativity, you can lead a completely
fulfilling and valuable life, both in and outside of business. You can live
your life as a work of art.
The Heuristic Approach
The value of developing your inner resources becomes apparent as you
look more deeply into the nature of creativity. Theresa Amabile provides
this scientific definition in her book The Social Psychology of Creativity:
A response will be judged as creative to the extent that (a) it is both a
novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable response to the task
at hand and (b) the task is heuristic rather than algorithmic.
The (a) of Amabile’s definition is easy: What you do is creative if it is
new, different, and helpful. Thus, if during a drive or walk or business
meeting you do anything the least bit unusual that is “appropriate, useful,
correct, or valuable,” you are being creative. Even routine activities are
likely to elicit something new: new perceptions, a new mood, a new need
of the moment, a new decision or response.
Part (b) requires further definitions, however. A heuristic is an incom-
plete guideline or rule of thumb that can lead to learning or discovery. An
algorithm is a complete mechanical rule for solving a problem or dealing
with a situation.
Thus, according to Amabile, if a task is algorithmic, it imposes its own
tried-and-true solution. If a task is heuristic, it offers no such clear path.
You must create one.
But when is a situation in business totally algorithmic? Isn’t it possible
that a task becomes algorithmic only when you approach it algorithmically?
It is the premise of this book that a heuristic response to problems is the
open-sesame to personal creativity in business.
Each of the following chapter titles are heuristics, and each chapter
provides explanations, actual business experiences, and exercises for living
with these credos or heuristics. Since heuristics are rules of thumb or
guidelines for discovery, they relate to exploring your creativity as a road
3. BUSINESS AS ART 5
map relates to exploring a new area. Just like a road map, our heuristics
don’t tell you exactly what to do on yourtrip, when to leave, what vehicle to
use, what route to take, or how far to go in what time period. They allow
your own creativity to determine its own path. One student discovered:
Creativity isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.
With this heuristic approach to business, you can see that creative
behavior is integral to business, because such behavior is useful, resource-
ful, correct, valuable, and self-expressive—not different for the sake of
difference.
Creativity in business is a way of life. lt is an ongoing process, not a
series of isolated aberrations. It is a productive attitude developed by
individuals throughout their business lifetimes, not a random good idea that
happens to work.
Creativity thrives at all levels and in all phases of business. Beginning
clerks, corporation heads and everyone in-between can be creative. This
includes data analysts as well as the idea men and women in marketing and
advertising.
Our approach also implies that creativity is more individual than organi-
zational. Some people live creatively in smokestack industries in the
American Midwest. Others stagnate in Silicon Valley. It’s easier to be
creative in a company whose policies invite it, of course, but corporate
policy is not a requirement for individual creative expression.
Your Creative Experiences
The word “heuristic” has the same Greek root as the exclamation
“Eureka!” so often accompanied in comic strips with the flashing light
bulb of a new idea. The Eureka! phenomenon has been a part ofdiscussions
on creativity ever since the day Archimedes reportedly ran naked through
the streets shouting “Eureka!” (I have found it)—having discovered, as he
sat in a bath, his principle for identifying a metal’s composition by the water
it displaces.
Have you had any Eureka! experiences lately?
If we ask our students on the first day of class to rate themselves on a
creativity scale, many put themselves below average. For that reason, we
confront them with the task of recalling a time when they had a great idea,
one that solved an important problem for them. By merely contemplating
their own past experience and hearing the experiences of others, they
recognize the presence of their own creativity.
You can do the same thing with the following exercise. As with all the
exercises in this book, just reading the directions and the sample experi-
ences can give you a sense of what the outcome will be for you if you
complete the exercise. In this case, it may be enough for you to just quickly
remember a time when you solved a problem. Or you might try doing this in
a meditative way, as follows:
4. 6 ESSENCE
Sit comfortably, with your back straight and your hands in your lap.
Close your eyes and breathe deeply into your belly. Notice your stomach
rising and falling as you breathe from your center, doing easy abdominal
breathing. Now think ofa time when you had a great idea—one that solved
a problem or dealt neatly with a situation. It doesn’t have to be a business
idea. If it was briefly important to you, that’s enough.
With youreyes closed, breathing from your center, remember how it felt
to have that idea. What was the specific problem? How long did you
struggle, and against what? What emotions did you feel? How did your
rational processes go? What was the Eureka! moment like? What were the
surrounding conditions? What happened to you and your idea next? Was it
actually used’? How did that come about?
Enjoy the memory for as long as you like. When you open your eyes,
consider taking the time for further exploration. You might write down the
details, your feelings, and the upshot of this creative experience.
Over the past twenty years or so, thousands of people from all sorts of
academic and business settings have done this exercise with us. No matter
how uncreative someone believes himself to be, he soon recalls a past idea,
and he eventually recalls many. These episodes areevidence ofthe inherent
creativity in each individual.
Many of the great ideas, like the following two, are business-related.
Bill Camplisson, now director of marketing plans and programs at
Ford-Europe, tells of a time when design engineers couldn’t find a cost-
effective way to produce, for a new sports car, bucket seats that would
automatically adjust to body contours. Months of work seemed wasted on
exorbitantly expensive mechanical models. One night Camplisson sat
back, exhausted, in one of these seats and started daydreaming ofplaying
on the seashore as a child. A big guy steppedon his beach ball, crumpling it.
Camplisson (the child) started to cry. His father came running and pushed
in the edges of the ball. Eureka! The ball popped out, as round and firm
as new.
The dream beach ball exploded in Camplisson’s mind. Through its
dynamics, the engineers created a cost-effective design for bucket seats that
responded to body contours.
A second example of a great idea comes from Mary Lou Shockley, now
chief financial officer of the Spectrum Services division of Pacific Telesis.
She relates that she had presented to her company, at that time Pacific
Telephone, an analysis of their poor performance in the timely installation
of data services. She was flying back to Los Angeles with her boss, Doug
Fagg, having an end-of-the-day drink, when:
It dawned on me that the responsibilityfor the installation of the service
was in the hands of only fifteen people in a department of sixteen
hundred. Why not set up a club that would meet every two weeks over
lunch to discuss the roadblocks to service installation?
5. BUSINESS AS ART 7
Implementation of this idea required additional ideas and much hard
work, but in six months Southern California’s data service went from the
worst to the best in the Bell System.
Many of the great ideas involve career changes. It seems that creativity
blossoms for many people when they are doing something new, something
that is forcing them to grow in all parts of their life. Like a new love or
the renewal of an old one, a career change forces one to look at things in
fresh ways.
Some great ideas are very personal and perhaps trivial to the outside
world, but they are examples of creativity nonetheless. They give valida-
tion to each person’s innercreativity.
One man, for instance, was extremely depressed after business and
social failures and deaths in his family. His great idea recollection went
back to childhood—when he was six years old and was sent with another
boy to the principal’s office to be disciplined for fighting. By telling the
principal they were friends (having formed an uneasy alliance in the hall
enroute), they avoided punishment. He applied that childhood success to
his adult depression by making friends with himself. As with Camplisson’s
bucket-seat breakthrough, the solution came through a daydream. It led to
his getting on with his life in a very positive way.
Your Inner Creative Resource
Reviewing your great ideas and those of others gives you impressions of
the creative process. It seems that creativity starts with some problem or
need and moves in various ways through a series of stages, consisting of
information-gathering, digestion of the material, incubation or forgetting
the problem, sudden inspiration (when the conditions are idiosyncratically
right), and, finally, implementation.
But the creative process can be distinctive for every person and every
idea. More important than striving to pin down the process is getting some
experience and practice in living with your enormous, almost unfathom-
able, inner creative resource.
Jim Benham, founder of Capital Preservation Fund as well as of a
performing jazz band, says this about his own creative process:
I really do get a lot of good ideas when I play my horn. This type of
meditation i’m describing is a very creative process WhenIpractice my
.
horn, I don’t look at music. 1 don’t read a note. I simply play, I play
melodies that come into mind. Iplay scales. I play slow exercises. I’ll be
playing my horn and all of a sudden some business thought pops into my
head. I’ll go write it down. I don’t know how to explain it, but that’sjust
what happens.
Where do ideas come from? Benham is not alone in his puzzlement; the
source ofcreativity has been amystery throughout the ages. When you have
6. 8 ESSENCE
an idea or when you have an experience of your own potential, what is it
that you are experiencing? What can you expect ifyou were to fully realize
your potential’?
In some sense you can’t describe your inner creative resource in words. It
is the very fact that it is beyond words that makes it so potentially powerful
in your life. So we emphasize experiences in this book—experiences of
creative people in business and experiences you can have. But let’s give
you a starter description ofyour true potential.
Your inner resource is so immediate and yet timeless, so basic and
overarching, so individual and also universal that we have chosen the word
“Essence” to describe it. Our speakers and students, many philosophical
traditions and even principles of great art cry out with what this creative
resource can mean in business and life.
First, your inner creative Essence provides the quality of intuition: a
direct knowing without conscious reasoning. Intuition has always been a
powerful mainstay of great business, but until fairly recently it has been
denied as a business tool in the era of overdependence on analysis. This is
no longer true. Business people now speak of intuition with pride. It is
considered a mark of management ability.
Artists would relate intuition to the art principle ofdesign. And the word
“design” describes perfectly what you are doing when you use your
intuition. You see instantly with clarity the design ofa solution, a design for
your life.
But intuition alone is not enough either to describe your Essence or to
sustain a creative life. A second quality, will, begins to fill in the picture. lt
is the part of you that can take responsibility. It is the ground of your
creative actions. People who are creative in business have a compelling
vision or mission, and this exemplifies will. It is most directly related to the
art principle ofunity, and it does have that characteristic ofunifying, giving
you a singular purpose to integrate all your creative breakthroughs.
The third quality of Essence is joy. This book could have been called
The Joy of Business because, for all the work and frequent difficulty that
creativity entails, it always brings a sense ofjoy. When you get a hint of
your own creativity or potential, you always feel this bright, shimmering
quality ofjoy. It is best related to the art quality ofbalance. When you have
balance within yourself and between all parts of your life, you experience
the joy of the flow ofcreativity.
We often talk about creativity in terms of breakthrough. And to break
through a wall of fear and criticism that might stop you, you need a fourth
quality, strength. Creative business people take appropriate risks. Their
strength allows them to do that without even seeing risks as risky. This inner
strength overcomes fear. This Essence quality is most closely related to the
art principle of contrast. Just as an artist—a painter or a photographer or a
choreographer or a composer—relies on contrast to make a strong point,
the creative businessman has the strength to be new and different when new
7. BUSINESS AS ART 9
and different is exactly right. You have this strength within you, waiting to
be tapped.
Finally you can draw on a fifth quality of Essence, compassion, to
completely bring your creativity into the world. This compassion isn’t the
mushiness of do-gooders. Instead it is loving kindness, first for yourself and
then for others. When you operate from this compassion you nurture your
own ability, recognizing your own creativity and that of others. It causes
you to experience the ultimate Eureka! feeling of “I Am.” Creative
business people can implement their creativity so well because they have
that confidence in their own creativity and bring it out in others too.
Compassion of this sort is best related to the art principle of harmony, and
you can see how it can create harmony, not only among all the qualities of
Essence but also in your business life.
Intuition, will, joy, strength, and compassion—these qualities of Es-
sence form your creative base. Consider what your life would be like if you
lived every moment with what you can have at your beck and call.
Philosophical and psychological traditions often emphasize the enormity
of Essence by characterizing these qualities in totalities: infinite intuition
(design), complete will (unity), absolute shimmering joy (balance), over-
whelming strength (contrast), and boundless compassion (harmony).
This vision ofcreativity is far wider anddeeper than mastery ofproblem-
solving techniques. It is also far more personal, but at the same time
impersonal. We look within to find our own individual and universal
source. That source has been called the inner self, the Self, the hidden
mind, the divine spark, the Divine Ego, the Great I Am, God, and Essence.
Some say that the very purpose of human existence is to get acquainted with
your own essential qualities and express them in your daily activities.
Whether it is the purpose of life or not, it is a fine definition of personal
creativity: living every moment from your Essence.
Bringing Art into Your Business Life
A question that has occurred to many thoughtful people might be coming
to your mind now. If you have this inherent creativity within you, this
Essence with its five magnificent qualities, why hasn’t it appeared more
often? Why haven’t you been more naturally and consistently creative?
The answer is that your creativity has been inhibited by fear, negative
personal judgment, and the chattering ofyour mind. Your creative Essence
is often blocked by what is called the false personality, the ego or the
external self.
And the key to personal creativity in business is in eliminating the
conflict between false personality and Essence. The creativity techniques
from the 1950s, such as brainstorming, do little to deal with this basic
conflict—a conflict that keeps you from being consistently creative. Trying
to destroy the false personality also has problems, because you c~n damage
8. I0 ESSENCE
or submerge aspects of your persona that are truly valuable to developing
your full potential. Your best approach is to awaken your own Essence
by experiencing it strongly; then you can intelligently overcome your
own false personality as your true self manifests itself more and more in
your life.
This strategy builds on the kind of experience we have all had; a deep,
personal love for someone. Such love is an experience ofEssence. We know
that when we’re in love we are not very much affected by fear, negative
internaljudgments, or the endless chatter of a broken-record mind.
Of course it is not possible to fall deeply into love every day before we go
to work. At least it’s not possible for most of us. But it is clear that
outstanding business people are successful because they deeply love what
they do; they seem to live directly from Essence, without static from a false
personality.
Only a few people naturally find this kind of love for their work and art in
their life. For the rest of us, the Stanford course and this hook offer ways to
repeatedly experience personal creativity. With practice it becomes natural
to replace confusion with will, fear with strength, negative judgment with
intuition, and the ceaseless mental chattering with joy and compassion.
The heuristics will help you to find your way. In the next four chapters
they are used, along with exercises and experiences, to give you four
essential tools—almost super-heuristics—that you need to develop in
order to manifest your creativity fully. These tools are: faith in your own
creativity, absence of negative judgment, precise observation, and
penetrating questioning. In fact you had and used these abilities as a child.
The next four chapters—the section called Preparation—will help you
rediscover them.
Of course you can’t have creativity without a problem or issue in your
life. When we ask business people what is bothering them, the answers fall
almost entirely into five categones: career or purpose in life, time and
stress, balancing personal and professional life, issues of money and
self-worth, and bringing personal creativity into the business organization.
Do they sound familiar to you? They are so pervasive that we now call them
the five challenges. They must be met in order for you to have a fully
creative life in business. The last five chapters of the book—in the section
called Inspiration and Implementation—each concentrate on one of these
five challenges.
We trust that as you live with the heuristics, develop the essential tools
and apply them to the challenges in your life, your true creative potential
will manifest more and more in business. You will become an artist in the
largest possible sense.