Business as the Ultimate Art Form

“Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” Howard Aiken

Why would I call business the ultimate art form? Businesses start from an idea that creates meaning –to its owners, workers, customers and even in some cases to the world at large. A sculptor chips away rock or forms clay into a figure that is meaningful and beautiful, but when it’s done, it’s done. In business, the tools and media used are dynamic—people, ideas, capital, systems—all changing all the time. A business is never “done”—at least not until it closes its doors.

It takes art to conceive of the idea for a new business, product or service. The science takes over, putting systems and procedures and principles to work. Danger happens when a company continues doing the same thing in the same way too long. When the environment changes, which it does all the time, the business has to change, too.

Look at Netflix as an example. This company has been around less than ten years, and in that time has become the standard of movie rentals. Other companies in that business, like Blockbuster, have had to adopt the Netflix model just to stay in business.

Now Netflix is facing the need to transform the way it operates because people are starting to download movies instead of waiting for them in the mail. The same thing happened in the music business which is still reeling from the need to change. They wasted too many years trying to stop people downloading music before realizing that they had to instead find a way to work with the new technology.

Somebody once said, “You have to ride the horse in the direction the horse is going.” When the horse changes directions, businesses have to change, too.

We know that change is now happening faster than ever before in history. As Dorothy might say, “Things come and go so quickly here.” That’s why business schools are starting to teach creativity.

Businesses are beginning to value creativity. In 2005, 29% of MBA programs had courses in creativity and innovation and nearly 92% of the rest said they were likely to offer one in the next five years. (Business Week Online) According to some professors, “employers in the new economy value innovative and creative thinking as much as traditional frameworks and skills.”

It’s time to hone your skills in creativity. Over the next few months, I’ll be giving you 101 ways improve your creativity, innovation and ingenuity. Stay tuned.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

The Library: Denver’s Best Resource

“The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”

Thomas Carlyle

Maybe you think libraries are just for checking out books. If you’ve been inside a library in the past 5-10 years, you know that you can also check out movies and music CDs. One of our local libraries offers a toy library and many branches host children’s story times, classes in English as a Second Language and computer literacy.

You may have visited the genealogy department of the library to research the history of your family or your house. Lately, my visits to the downtown library have been to attend free classes where I learn how to make my own books. I’ve taken classes about three different books styles, plus one on making altered books, one on using scrapbook techniques and decoupage to personalize a composition book and one on book repair. These classes and more are offered through the Denver Public Library’s Fresh City Life program. You can sign up for the online newsletter to keep you updated on all events at the DPL website: www.denverlibrary.org.

Last night, I took a library class on using collage techniques to make a picture frame out of a discarded book. Instructor Judith Cassel-Mamet conducts intimate, entertaining workshops, and many of the students are Judith groupies who sign up for everything she teaches. A retired high-school ceramics teacher, she now teaches at the Art Students League of Denver and the University of Denver. I’ve learned from her how to make accordion books, scrolls and altered books in addition to the book/frame.

She started using cast off books in her projects when she saw high school students carrying boxes of old books to the dumpster and learned that school librarians purge books from the libraries annually. Many of her altered book projects become artists’ journals or photo albums.

I’ve always loved libraries, just for the books. With all the additional resources they offer these days, I just can’t stay away

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Maya Angelou

“My confidence and sense of curiosity—you can trace it back to just that I loved reading.” Bill Gates

If you need an argument against classrooms as the ideal learning environment, look to Maya Angelou. Unschooled, but hardly uneducated, Angelou is universally admired and respected for her wide-ranging accomplishments. Bill Gallo of Westword has this to say about her:

“The talents of Maya Angelou – she is or has been a teacher, memoirist, prize-winning poet, actress, civil-rights activist, editor, playwright, composer, dancer, producer, theater and TV director, and advisor to three presidents – range so far and deep that no feat she accomplishes could come as a surprise.”

The theme for the life of this legendary woman may very well be “One thing leads to another” which is, fittingly, the first rule of independent scholarship. Starting her adult life as an unwed 16-year-old mother led her to a series of sustenance jobs to support herself and her son. These jobs couldn’t engage her mind, however, and she always loved reading. “Since childhood,” she wrote in Gather Together in My Name, “I had often read until the gray light entered my room.” As an adult, “I could be seen haunting the libraries.” I could, and often did to myself or my baby, recite whole passages of Shakespeare, Paul Lawrence Dunbar poems, Kipling’s “If.”

Reading wasn’t her only love. She had studied dance and drama starting at age fourteen. This eventually led to a role in the international touring company of Porgy and Bess. When she returned, she decided to try writing. The Harlem Writers Guild, “a loosely formed organization, without dues or membership cards,” which gave her important criticism.

“Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.” But Angelou threw herself into it as she did with everything she undertook. As she wrote about an earlier job managing a restaurant, “I didn’t entertain the thought that I wouldn’t do the job well.”

Following other interests and using mentors, colleagues, and chutzpah, she added playwright, producer, civil rights leader, and newspaper editor to her growing list of accomplishments.

Although Angelou has no academic degrees, she has become one of our wisest leaders. She has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a National Book Award, and Emmys for her acting and writing and has received numerous awards for her vast array of accomplishments. Her debut directing the feature film, Down in the Delta, was yet another in a long list of startling successes. Ironically, a woman who learned everything she knows outside the classroom, now teaches in a classroom as a Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Great Ideas

"Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings."- C. D. Jackson

New ideas are rarely all that new. Usually, they are new combinations of concepts or adaptations of old ideas. One of the best ways to come up with new ideas is to collect ideas from other people. Mark Twain said, "All ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and used by the creative person with pride and satisfaction."

Thomas Edison kept a file of his own ideas and those of others that he thought he could adapt. Author and creativity expert Michael Michalko offers the following techniques for adapting ideas:

• What can be SUBSTITUTED? (Who else? What else? Other ingredient? Other process? Other power? Other place? Other approach? Can you change the rules?)
• What can be COMBINED? (How about a blend, an alloy, an assortment, an ensemble? Combine units? Combine purposes with something else? Combine appeals? Combine ideas?)
• What can I ADAPT from something else to the idea? (What else is like this? What other idea does this suggest? Does the past offer a parallel? What could I copy? Whom could I emulate?)
• What can I MAGNIFY? (What can be added? More time? Stronger? Higher? Longer? Extra value? Extra features? Duplicate? Multiply? Exaggerate?)
• What can I MODIFY or change? (What can be altered? New twist? Change meaning, color, motion, sound, odor, form, shape? What other changes can be made?)
• Can I PUT the idea TO OTHER USES? (New ways to use as? Other uses if modified? Can you make it do more things? Other extensions? Other spin-off? Other markets?)
• What can be ELIMINATED? (What to subtract? Smaller? Condensed? Miniature? Lower? Shorter? Lighter? Omit? Streamline? Split up? Understate?)
• What can be REARRANGED the parts? (What other arrangement might be better? Interchange components? Other pattern? Other layout? Other sequence? Transpose cause and effect? Change pace? Change schedule?)
• Can it be REVERSED? (Transpose positive and negative? How about opposites? Turn it upside down? Reverse roles? Consider it backwards? What if you did the unexpected?)

Start your own idea file. It can be a paper file of newspaper and magazine articles, a collection of index files or a doorful of Post-it notes.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved