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The Art of Business: Make All Your Work a Work of Art

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Whether you're a student, a business executive or an aspiring artist, all can benefit from seeing the world through eyes blending aesthetic appreciation and strategy. Using the artist's eye, The Art Of Business: Make All Your Work A Work Of Art shows how to use artistic flow patterns to use emotion, imagination and intuition to improve the outputs of a job. Even a company can benefit from blending the two flows of aesthetic and emotional richness with strategic fine tuning, using The Art Of Business as a guide.

Many authors exhort us to hold two seemingly opposed notions in our mind if we want to make business breakthroughs. That idea is an important principle in the business classic, Built to Last. It's common for business experts to also espouse the idea of balancing perspectives such as the quantitative with the qualitative, the financial with a customer focus, and vision with practicality.

More recently, some authors have started to see parallels between the worlds of the arts and business, such as in The Art of Possibility.

The Art of Business represents the culmination of these new views of leadership by encouraging us to "make all your work a work of art." Although on the surface, that sounds simply like taking an artful and business-like approach, at a deeper level the book is addressing a very old tradition . . . that of craftsmanship -- creating something that rewards the soul as well as the body. The example in the book that resonated most with me was the new business model and product thinking behind the Apple iPod.

If you are prepared to open your mind to more rewarding work and providing more rewards to those who employ your work in their lives, The Art of Business will help you expand your horizons in ways that will leave the world richer.

This book will be of most value to those who understand a lot about how to manage what is . . . but aren't sure how to create what is needed, but doesn't exist yet. People who are interested in business model innovation will find this book contains powerful perspectives and paradigms that will enable that important work which I describe in The Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Bravo, Mssrs. David and McIntosh!

"Outside the box" can be a good thing, in books, in business and in art. How often does a business book affirm the things that are most important in life (besides money?) I found this book inspiring and relaxing, not to mention spiritual. Highly recommended!

A new age is dawning. If nothing else, this is a new age of declarations of a new age. In the business realm, these new eras usually revolve around empowered customers, Internet-related technologies, or non-hierarchical organizations and styles of leadership. Stan Davis and David McIntosh's vision has much in common with some of the more customer-centered visions, such as that expressed in Joseph Pine and James Gilmore's The Experience Economy. By opening up to the power of artistic flow, businesses can learn from the arts in areas including managing creativity, identifying talent, finding meaning in work, and working toward peak performance. The authors are urging executives to "make all your work a work of art."

Why are we on the edge of a shift toward the aesthetic in business now? In common with many others before them, Davis and McIntosh assert that after moving from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, we are stepping into yet another era. In "Revenge of the Right Brain", Daniel Pink argued that the logical, left-brain thinking behind the Information Age was giving way to a new "Conceptual Age" that prizes artistry, empathy, and emotion.

Similarly, Davis and McIntosh believe we are being driven beyond the Information Age by three basic forces: the rise of sound and images; the emotionally richer communication these enable; and the fact that these changes are happening faster outside than inside the organization. Just as executives now accept the importance of corporate culture-an idea that was little appreciated until twenty years ago-they are now beginning to recognize the benefits of focusing on the aesthetic and emotional dimensions of work and business.

The Art of Business compares the economic flow of business-its inputs, processes, and outputs-to the equally real artistic flow. We need not choose one or the other; we can look at business through both perspectives at once. Artistic processes can also be understood in terms of inputs, processes, and outputs, even though the elements are very different. The elements of economic flow are inputs of raw materials or factors of production; all the processes of creation, production, and consumption in the value chain that transform inputs into outputs; and outputs of goods and services that aim to be better, faster, cheaper, and safer. The elements of artistic flow are imagination, emotion, intelligence, and experience; processes of creation, performance, and appreciation; and outputs that aim at beauty, excitement, enjoyment, and meaning.

After exploring the ideas of dualities and artistic flow, Davis and McIntosh organize the bulk of The Art of Business around what they see as the main elements of artistic flow, then conclude with twenty suggestions for imbuing your work with artistry. The experienced business reader will come across numerous familiar examples, from the iPod to JetBlue, and far fewer fresh examples. You will find the occasional glittering nugget, such as one that crops up in discussing rich communications: "If Andy Warhol were still alive, he would say that, in the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen people." This is the best line in the book, and is accompanied by little to enlighten all but the most cloistered executives. In the end, most readers are likely to extract more benefit from The Experience Economy or Postrel's The Substance of Style, or from articles such as "The New Frontier of Experience Innovation" and "Lean Consumption."

Bringing the World of Art to the World of Business is an interesting and relevant concept. This is why it's all the more disappointing when this book fails to deliver anything more then the most basic extensions of this concept. From thoughts on Art as Business ("See your customer as an audience") to basic business quips ("Profit is like health: you can't live without it, but it shouldn't be the only reason for your existence") - the book fails to deliver anything more then a basic framework with a smattering of supporting ideas, enough to get you started but nothing more.

If you're an artist looking to leverage your skills for business or a business person thinking of launching an Art-type initiative, this book may be worth your time. Otherwise, you might just want to think of what you're producing as a work of art, and the rest will naturally follow.

If you're determined to pick up a management book by an artist, and until I write one - try "The Art of Possibility" a good read on management techniques from an Orchestra Conductor and a Family Therapist. I also strongly recommend you check out Tom Peter's "Re-Imagine" - where he covers everything from the WOW project to bringing the heart of design into everything you do.

Below are some of the tidbits from the book:

The Economic Flow
* Inputs: Land, Labor, Capital
* Processes: R&D, Manufacturing, Distribution, Marketing
* Outputs: Better, Faster, Cheaper, Safer

The Artistic Flow
* Inputs: Imagination, Emotion, Intelligence, Experience
* Processes: Create, Produce, Connect
* Outputs: Beauty, Excitement, Enjoyment, Meaning

* Beauty gets its power from being simultaneously stimulating and calming. Excitement is most compelling when we get safe thrills. Enjoyment comes from finding freshness in familiar content. And meaning is strongest when we manage to personalize what's universal.

* Steps to take in getting started: Whatever your job, take a customer's experience with your company's product or service and then find the story in it. Tell the story several times, each time asking yourself how you can tell it better without changing its truthfulness. As HBS said "if you want to know the process, staple yourself to an order". Take a problem you have and express it artistically, as a song, poem, drawing, dance. Take an email and sign it before you send it - does it sound like rap, chant, swing, ballad, etc. You're trying to get a bead on the non-rational, non-cognitive line your readers will have. When you have a problem, think of how a group of famous people would solve it - Einstein, Lincoln, Dell, Oprah, etc. Think of how people react to what you do and give yourself a grade on your emotional intelligence. The longer your company has been around, the more experience you should be able to draw upon. The more connections you have, the more creativity you can support. When looking for enjoyment, ask your customer if you made them smile.

The Art of Business, with its subtitle "Make All your Work a Work of Art", adds an exciting perspective for bringing out the aesthetic possibilities in all work, even that of those whose main work is home and volunteer service.

The popular view is that art and business are separate spheres of life. If not incompatible, pretty close. What these authors do is make an excellent case that this is not true and specifically that there is much that business can learn from art. They then offer specific suggestions. It is a very interesting and thought provoking book. It made me think differently about business and even a bit differently about life in general. Well worth the read.

I discovered this book while searching for literature on creativity. As someone who teaches a required "arts appreciation" course at a mid-sized state university, I was delighted to find a number of things to share with my freshman students, many of whom are trying to get into our business school. An eclectic approach to subject matter usually helps professors "relate" better to their students in this course, and "The Art of Business" is an excellent addition to my library!