Creativity is the crucial variable in the process of turning knowledge into value — John Kao Creativity Copy Share Image
The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager. — John Kao Business Copy Share Image
The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use. — John Kao Imagination Copy Share Image
You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to… — John Kao Copy Share Image
You are able to monitor and police your standards of quality once you have defined them. — John Kao Copy Share Image
A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society. — John Kao Copy Share Image
The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time. — John Kao Copy Share Image
Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go… — John Kao Approach Copy Share Image
Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting. — John Kao Copy Share Image
Creativity is not like the weather: You can do something about it. And you can measure it well enough to determine its… — John Kao Copy Share Image
The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities. — John Kao Accountability Copy Share Image
Organizations are about putting ideas through one or more types of gating procedures. In this way, ideas go from being a whim… — John Kao Copy Share Image
You would not let your kids do whatever they want. So the challenge is to create accountability in a non-mechanistic way. You… — John Kao Accountability Copy Share Image
It takes creativity at every stage to make the discontinuous leap from one level of knowledge to the next. These discontinuous leaps… — John Kao Creation Copy Share Image
Now jamming - which is about collaborative improvisation - has to do with getting people together to be creative musically. But it… — John Kao Copy Share Image
In the end it is the musician who actually plays the notes. The impresario - or the project leader - is only… — John Kao Copy Share Image
The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick… — John Kao Art Copy Share Image
Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate… — John Kao Copy Share Image
All of these creative ideas and decisions about new ways to reach the consumer can be tracked with regard to how well… — John Kao Awareness Copy Share Image
The traditional model for a company like Coca-Cola is to hire one big advertising agency and essentially outsource all of its creativity… — John Kao Copy Share Image
Every day, there are 770 million Cokes consumed, which means that there are 770 million purchasing decisions made each day regarding the… — John Kao Advertising Copy Share Image
In a corporate context, companies have to try very hard to oppose the enticements of conventional wisdom. They must aim for the… — John Kao Copy Share Image
There's real "right brain" creativity that goes into all of the organizational processes that a company utilizes and must continually reinvent in… — John Kao Copy Share Image
The management of creativity is more intimate. By that I mean that it deals with an individual's personal, psychological landscape. It deals… — John Kao Copy Share Image
There are some pretty obvious ways of benchmarking creativity. One way is to perform what I call a creativity audit, which is… — John Kao Copy Share Image
The impresario function is about intervening with the company's more administrative management structure. It is about trying to establish a sense of… — John Kao Copy Share Image
In a large pharmaceutical company, where it's a big bet, you're going to need finance people to be involved in the decision-making… — John Kao Agreement Copy Share Image
The manager's job - the impresario's job - is to preside over the company's efforts to jam so the business runs really… — John Kao Business Copy Share Image
Jazz has to work. It has to play with the audience and with the marketplace. I think that is relevant to business. — John Kao Audience Copy Share Image
The capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not… — John Kao Business Copy Share Image
Coca-Cola can get really fresh output because it is getting people who are outside the traditional model and they are combining ideas… — John Kao Copy Share Image
If you are at Coca-Cola, the creative challenge is one of maintaining - rather than creating - a tremendous level of consumption… — John Kao Challenges Copy Share Image
The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear. — John Kao Creative Copy Share Image
Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body. — John Kao Body Copy Share Image
Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz,… — John Kao Copy Share Image
Tunes have notes and tempos and rules. If the tune is "All the Things You Are," you have to adhere to its… — John Kao Copy Share Image
Conducting a creativity audit can be very illuminating because it can tell you how the process is working internally and against the… — John Kao Audit Copy Share Image
If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the… — John Kao Copy Share Image
