The Future of Arts and Business Collaboration
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Tom Tresser presented on the future of arts and business collaboration at the TedxMich Avenue event on May 8, 2011. The entire event was devoted to investigating the future of the arts in America. http://www.tresser.com
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The Future of Arts and Business Collaboration
- 1. A Future for Arts & Business Collaboration TEDxMichiganAve
- 12. “ Our core values statement is now official.”
- 14. F A I L E D
- 15. “ By failing to teach the principles of corporate governance, our business schools have failed our students. And by not internalizing sound principles of governance and accounting, B-school graduates have matured into executives and investment bankers who have failed American workers and retirees who have witnessed their jobs and saving vanish… American business schools need to rethink what we are teaching – and not teaching – the next generation of leaders.”
- 17. +
- 24. Darrell Jones Use your peripheral vision…
- 27. Robert & Michele Root-Bernstein TRY. PLUNGE. PRACTICE. PLAY. BE.
- 29. Final Class – Four Teams Perform Their Research
- 30. +
- 31. The challenge. Seed capital. 20 students. A funky space. [email_address]
Editor's Notes
- My name is Tom Tresser, I came to Illinois to be a member of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in 1980. Over the past thirty years I’ve taken on the role of Creativity Champion. I think I am among friends and allies!
- The topic is “A Future for Arts and Business Collaboration.” But first we must set the stage. How has business in America been doing lately. As Ricky used to say – “Lucy – You got some ‘splaining to do!!!”
- Oh, no – the once lauded Enron and its leaders plunged us into a quagmire of shady bookkeeping practices. Arthur Anderson, their bookkeeper was destroyed. Surely – NOW we’ve learned some lessons and business will tighten up and act responsibly…
- Gulp. Didn’t some famous historian say something about nit learning the lessons of history? Didn’t another philosopher say something about suckers being born every minute?
- This most recent bail out of greed plagued financial institutions REALLY got costly – The Treasury Department flooded the scene with cash…$7.2 trillion
- And the Federal Reserve joined in with another $7.2 trillion. That’s a total of $14.4 TRILLION. 14 point four and then twelve zeros.
- While all that was going on – this guy committed about 5 to 8 billion dollars of theft and fraud –His victims included Jewish charities that provide health and educational services to the needy. But – the SEC had eight passes at this guy over a decade and they found nothing wrong!! Madoff was active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory securities industry organization and has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and on the Board of Governors of the NASD
- While all that was happening an oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 workers and drenching the region in toxic oil and other chemicals.
- BP blames the guys who ran the rig who blame Haliburton who built part of it who blame BP for green lighting short cuts. Anyone here from that part of the country. My heart goes out to you and your neighbors. What can we say about all these sad misdeeds?
- We seem to be incapable of --Learning from history. Righting our wrongs. Policing industry. Capturing blatant crooks BEFORE they rob us blind. I haven’t really heard a genuine APOLOGY from these guys yet.
- We have a real struggle here over who is in charge of assigning VALUE to things in this country and economy. Isn’t time for VALUES to be injected into the process of assigning VALUE? We seem to have a major disconnect around the question of “What is valuable?” and whose VALUES are driving American society.
- Is capitalism and the corporate model somehow inherently flawed?
- OR – are we training the best and brightest of young people incorrectly. And then REWARDING them obscenely?
- Michael Jacobs thinks so. He’s a professor of the Practice of Finance at the University of North Caroline Kenan-Flagler Business. School He is the founder and CEO of Jacobs Capital, which provides merger and acquisition and business valuation services. He served as director of corporate finance at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1989-91, and was responsible for national policy in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and corporate governance. This is what is wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
- Read this.
- So we need to think different about training our future business leaders!
- I propose a blended model – combining the analytical rigor and tools of the business school with the studio thinking skills and mindsets of the art school
- I would propose a learning experience that blends an appreciation and understanding of the Gift with
- Training in the arts and exposure to varieties of what has been called Studio Thinking. Think VALUES PLUS SKILLS.
- The ability to make something – something useful, something beautiful, something profound. Something meaningful. Some would say that meaning is the ultimate product AND the ultimate perk.
- Here are three of the mindsets and skills I would place in such a blended curriculum. Empathy is a key attribute sorely missing from the University of Chicago’s lexicon. But we surely need a strong dose of empathetic thinking – not just to truly and well serve the customer – but to rescue the planet from over indulgence and destruction.
- Ah – now to the heart of the matter. Making art – creating – is a gift. We need to acknowledge, celebrate and promote gifted-ness. Customers are beginning to make purchases based NOT on the feature sets of the product or offering – but on WHAT THEY KNOW AND FEEL about the offerer. We need a better accounting system to make room for the VALUE of human happiness, healthy children, beauty, and the survival of The Commons – which does not belong to anyone – but which we are in a hurry to divide and despoil.
- I just finished teaching such a class at IIT Stuart School of Business. It was for 15 weeks, 2 1/2 hours on Saturdays. The class content was divided into three large buckets – Individual Creativity looked at how to build one’s own personal creativity muscles and what might block them. Organizational creativity looked at the literature on how to make businesses and places innovation friendly, Civic creativity looked at creativity as a policy issue and compared how America is doing to other nations on a number of measures.
- I brought in experts and we visited a number of Chicago innovation hot spots. Dancer, educator and choreographer Darrell Jones gave us an hour-long workshop that had us on our feet and dancing! One of the lessons that came out of the experience was a discussion of peripheral vision and body-awareness – and how those skills are useful in business!
- Two of the owners of the retail sensation AKIRA sat with us for almost two hours and shared their amazing story. They answered questions and were extremely generous in their reflections on their success and learnings. Here a re a few things they told us…
- We visited the Chicago office of IDEO and were treated to a great overview presentation and tour by Liz and Ross. They shared insights into the IDEO way of working and solving complex business problems. They explained what Design Thinking means to them and walked us through a few case stories. The Number One word and skill that encapsulates that learning and the IDEO method – for me – is Empathy.
- The most experiential and non-traditional aspect of the class was the weekly assignment from the book “Sparks of Genius” by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. Based at the University of Michigan, this husband and wife team did extensive research into the histories of super-creative artists and Nobel Prize winning scientists and distilled a list of 13 competencies that these creatives demonstrated and mastered. The students were given two options each week and had to keep a journal documenting their creative work. Here are just a few samples of the amazing and varied work turned in by my students.
- This is my favorite piece of student art from the “Imaging” assignment – where students were asked to make a self-portrait.
- On the final class – which was last Saturday – four teams were required to PERFORM their research. Team One summarized the key learnings on creativity and devised a mock news show complete with interview segments, video and breakaway coverage of a massive Creativity Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico! Team Two interviewed four Chicago innovators and then impersonated them to tall their stories. Here LeeAnne presents the story of Chef Sean Sanders of the restaurant Browntrout. Team Three was tasked with picking and solving a world problem. They chose the issue of how to get people to be aware of and register as bone marrow donors. They created videos, play-within-a-play scenarios, original raps and demonstration – and then passed out donor registration information to the entire class. Team Four presented on how to make Chicago the creative hub of the nation and planet. They did this as a pitch for the World Creative Olympics and pretended that the audience was the decision-making body. Their pitch ended with the entire class boggying to “Sweet Home Chicago.” Whew!
- So who here is up for some experimentation?
- Can I get 20 explorers to help be develop a model or draft set of classes? Can I get someone to donate a create space to play in. And can I get some seed capital. And – can I get a “Hallelujah, Amen!”?