John Kao Quotes

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John Kao, born in 1950, is an accomplished author whose works span various genres, known for his profound insights and unique narrative style.

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Famous John Kao Quotes

“A pioneering and invaluable work about what it really takes to build innovation capability in society.”

Innovation Capability Invaluable Pioneering

Author:John Kao

“The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.”

Use Imagination Muscles

Author:John Kao

“Jazz musicians can be great teachers of business. Their creativity is not dependent on their mood, it does not have to be coaxed out of them, it has nothing to do with the phases of the moon or even how they feel that day. They go on stage and start playing. Being creative is their job.”

Feels Doe Jobs Creativity Creative Teacher Stage Goes On Moon Musician Jazz Mood Dependent Phases Be Creative Jazz Music Great Teacher Jazz Musician Phases Of The Moon

Author:John Kao

“Now jamming - which is about collaborative improvisation - has to do with getting people together to be creative musically. But it is a very powerful metaphor for understanding the grammar of the creative process. It applies to business and to other pursuits as well.”

People Wells Together Process Understanding Powerful Creative Metaphor Pursuit Creative Process Be Creative Grammar Very Powerful Improvisation

Author:John Kao

“The capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not successful.”

Important Company Successful Team Capacity Factors Differentiate Successful Company

Author:John Kao

“Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.”

Example Skills Built Jazz Tunes Improvisation Business Sense

Author:John Kao

“Tunes have notes and tempos and rules. If the tune is "All the Things You Are," you have to adhere to its structure and to the tradition behind that structure.”

Ifs Behinds Tradition Structure Notes Tunes Tempo

Author:John Kao

“Jazz is not about getting and playing whatever notes you want. It is about reworking themes in a manner that sounds good, that can be followed by the other musicians and that the audience enjoys. You cannot do that without first acquiring skills.”

Want Firsts Enjoy Sound Audience Skills Musician Jazz Notes Theme

Author:John Kao

“Jazz has to work. It has to play with the audience and with the marketplace. I think that is relevant to business.”

Thinking Play Audience Jazz Working It Relevant Marketplace

Author:John Kao

“There are some pretty obvious ways of benchmarking creativity. One way is to perform what I call a creativity audit, which is to look at your capabilities and look at your performance and examine the percentage of revenue that comes from products that are less than five years old, less than three years old and that are current with the present accounting period. You can then compare those figures to those of your competition along the same axes.”

“An organization is really a factory for producing new ideas and for linking those ideas with resources - human resources, financial resources, knowledge resources, infrastructure resources - in an effort to create value. These are processes that you can map, with results that you can measure.”

Humans Ideas Values Process Results Effort Resources Organization Financial Maps Factories New Ideas Infrastructure Human Resources Financial Resources

Author:John Kao

“Organizations are about putting ideas through one or more types of gating procedures. In this way, ideas go from being a whim to becoming a project, from being a "skunk works" effort to becoming an official, mainstream effort, from being an unfounded program to a funded process, and so on.”

Way Ideas Process Effort Type Becoming Projects Program Organization Officials Mainstream Procedures Whim Work Effort

Author:John Kao

“Conducting a creativity audit can be very illuminating because it can tell you how the process is working internally and against the competition.”

Process Creativity Competition Conducting Illuminating

Author:John Kao

“If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the challenge can be both large and subtle.”

Ifs Challenges Lines Products Bottom Track Come Up Contribution Subtle Bottom Line New Products

Author:John Kao

“If you are at Coca-Cola, the creative challenge is one of maintaining - rather than creating - a tremendous level of consumption for your products.”

Ifs Challenges Levels Creative Products Creating Consumption Maintaining Coca Cola

Author:John Kao

“Every day, there are 770 million Cokes consumed, which means that there are 770 million purchasing decisions made each day regarding the product. To support those decisions, the company must constantly reinvest in its marketing links to its customers. As a result, a high level of creativity must go into everything the company does, from cause-related campaigns - Coca-Cola and its sponsorship of the Olympic Village in Atlanta, for example - to new catch phrases, commercials, marketing slogans, advertising campaigns and promotional tie-ins.”

“All of these creative ideas and decisions about new ways to reach the consumer can be tracked with regard to how well they are working, whether and how they are building awareness for the product, how well they motivate the consumption of the product, and so on.”

Way Wells Ideas Decision Creative Awareness Building Products Regard Consumers Consumption New Ways Creative Ideas

Author:John Kao

“There's real "right brain" creativity that goes into all of the organizational processes that a company utilizes and must continually reinvent in order to conduct its business. But there are also the "left brain" accounting functions that must continually ask how the company is doing financially and whether the creative processes are working for the bottom line.”

Real Order Asks Left Process Lines Brain Company Creativity Creative Function Bottom Creative Process Bottom Line Accounting Organizational Left Brain

Author:John Kao

“I would argue that the management of creativity requires a skill set that's relatively different from the traditional management skill set that is appropriate to a large, complex, industrial-era organization.”

Different Creativity Skills Organization Management Complexes Arguing Traditional Eras Appropriate Management Skills

Author:John Kao

“The management of creativity is more intimate. By that I mean that it deals with an individual's personal, psychological landscape. It deals with the way you create relationships. It deals with creating an atmosphere and environment that support the creative process. As a result, it is a management skill set that is inherently psychological and that encourages desired outcomes rather than demands those outcomes.”

“The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.”

Mind Responsibility Creating Traditional Accountability Defining Mind Set

Author:John Kao

“When you come into a creativity-driven environment, things are very different and there is the danger that a traditional managerial mind-set could even do damage. That is because managing creative teams and people is very different from managing the factory worker/foreman relationship.”

People Mind Different Creativity Creative Environment Team Danger Workers Driven Traditional Damage Factories Mind Set Factory Workers Creative Team

Author:John Kao

“The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.”

Different Process Creative Flow Productions Traditional Creative Process Linear Work Flow

Author:John Kao

“Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.”

Process Creative Command Creative Process Command And Control

Author:John Kao

“Managing the creative process means selecting the best people and then letting them do their work. That means nurturing. It also means, from time to time, creating drama - even uncertainty - so that the creative environment has an edge to it, a charge, and does not run out of steam.”

People Mean Doe Running Process Creative Environment Drama Creating Edges Uncertainty Creative Process Nurturing Steam

Author:John Kao

“Performers may play in the studio, but they need to go out and tour every once in a while to keep their edge, or a performer who is a stranger may be asked to "sit in" on a set.”

Needs May Play Edges Studios Stranger Performers

Author:John Kao

“Rather than managing by clarifying events, the creative process may require raising the level of uncertainty. Sometimes this can be done by issuing a creative challenge that has resonance in that it inspires the team to activity.”

May Sometimes Done Process Challenges Levels Creative Team Events Inspire Activity Uncertainty Creative Process Resonance Clarifying

Author:John Kao

“The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.”

Jobs Company Creativity Driven Managers

Author:John Kao

“The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick artists and relate to them. People who know what the market craves.”

People Knows Jobs Artist Picks Relate Crave

Author:John Kao

“The head of a record label sets up structures, but he also defines the sound of the label, which is to describe what is desirable, what fits and what is quality for that label and then to create an environment where that sound can thrive.”

Sound Quality Records Environment Fit Structure Labels Thrive Desirable Record Labels

Author:John Kao

“A large part of the impresario's job has to do with maintaining and communicating standards of performance. Knowing how to set those standards - which are often more subjective than analytical - means knowing how to communicate the difference between something that is great and something that is just O.K.”

Mean Jobs Differences Knowing Standards Performances Communicate Subjective Maintaining

Author:John Kao

“You are able to monitor and police your standards of quality once you have defined them.”

Able Quality Standards Police Defined

Author:John Kao

“You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to perform at their highest levels.”

People Able Process Levels Creative Environment Highest Creative Process

Author:John Kao

“Ultimately, the impresario must know when to simply get out of the way.”

Knows Way

Author:John Kao

“In the end it is the musician who actually plays the notes. The impresario - or the project leader - is only there to make sure that happens. That is a very different type of management mind-set.”

Mind Different Ends Play Happens Leader Type Projects Musician Management Notes Mind Set

Author:John Kao

“The impresario functions as a bridge and a translator. He or she is a bridge between the creative point of view - which is often very focused on the creative task itself - and the resource-allocation process. The impresario has to make certain the funds and people required to get that task completed are available.”

People Certain Process Views Creative Resources Tasks Function Available Focused Point Of View Bridges Fund Translators Allocation

Author:John Kao

“The impresario function is about intervening with the company's more administrative management structure. It is about trying to establish a sense of boundaries and budgets and milestones and so forth on a project that does not necessarily lend itself to milestones. It is about translating between the intimate interior environment of the creative work team and the company's need to make money. And finally, it is about positioning the fruits of the creative process in the marketplace and selling them.”

“People must get respect for their new ideas.”

People Ideas New Ideas

Author:John Kao

“The traditional model for a company like Coca-Cola is to hire one big advertising agency and essentially outsource all of its creativity in that area. But Coca-Cola does not do it that way. It knows how to manage creative people and creative teams and it has been quite adept at building a network that includes the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, which is a talent agency.”

“Coca-Cola can get really fresh output because it is getting people who are outside the traditional model and they are combining ideas in very novel ways.”

People Way Ideas Novel Models Traditional Get Real Output Combining Coca Cola

Author:John Kao

“The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.”

Two Ideas Mark Intellect Contradictory Accommodate

Author:John Kao

“It takes creativity at every stage to make the discontinuous leap from one level of knowledge to the next. These discontinuous leaps of understanding lead to insights that in turn lead to value creation.”

Values Turns Next Understanding Levels Creativity Stage Creation Insight Leap

Author:John Kao

“In a corporate context, companies have to try very hard to oppose the enticements of conventional wisdom. They must aim for the leaps, which means that companies have to do more than simply manage their knowledge, which is composed of the insights and understandings they already know. They also have to manage the knowledge-generation process. It's not just about, "Oh, we're going to create a data warehouse and we are going to invent a computerized filing system to get at all the stuff we know."”

Knows Trying Mean Hard Stuff Process Understanding Company Generations Aim Insight Manage Data Corporate Leap Conventional Conventional Wisdom Filing Warehouse Enticement

Author:John Kao

“Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.”

Company Risk Approach Musician Performances Jazz Tunes Jazz Music Jazz Musician New Knowledge New Approach

Author:John Kao

“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 because the investment can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. You're going to have to run scenarios. You might even need agreement from the C.E.O. to make that type of decision. If it's an incremental, low-cost decision in a marketing-oriented company, it may be a very different set of stakeholders a lot further down in the organization.”

“The larger the price tag, the more you have to adopt what I call the postmodern management approach. What I mean by that is that you have to use everything when you make a decision.”

Mean Use Decision Approach Management Tag Postmodern Price Tag

Author:John Kao

“You need judgment, you need to utilize conventional resource-allocation analysis, you have to work backward from estimations of the market to the current investments and you have to do some benchmarking of your product and its potential against your competition.”

Needs Products Judgment Resources Competition Investment Currents Analysis Conventional Estimation Allocation

Author:John Kao

“The conventional asset-allocation method is like sheet music. It is prescribed, it has right answers and wrong answers and it sounds about the same every time. But jamming is different. Jamming is when you make the music. When you improvise and adapt to conditions. When you are creative.”

Different Sound Answers Creative Conditions Method Assets Conventional Sheets Right Answers Allocation Wrong Answers Asset Allocation Sheet Music

Author:John Kao

“Jamming - which follows rules but not individual notes - gives you a different result each time, depending upon the players and the conditions in which they find themselves. It is adaptable to changing conditions.”

Giving Different Individual Results Player Conditions Notes Adaptable

Author:John Kao

“The challenge is to manage creative people so that the output is fruitful. The challenge is not to have an open environment and simply let them do whatever they want.”

People Want Challenges Creative Environment Manage Creative People Output

Author:John Kao

About the Author

Born: 1950
Known for: Author
Quotes: 57

Books & Sources

Jamming: Art and Discipline of Business CreativitRelated source material

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