John Kao Quotes

Quotes about:

• Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen.

  John Kao

  Communication, Sea, Creative

  49 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Organization, Ideas, Effort

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  6 Copy quote

• Creativity is the crucial variable in the process of turning knowledge into value

  John Kao

  Creativity, Variables, Process

  John Kao (2009). “Jamming: Art and Discipline of Business Creativit”, p.7, Harper Collins

  8 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Police, Quality, Able

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  People, Creative, Levels

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Creativity, Understanding, Levels

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Skills, Want, Firsts

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  10 Copy quote

• People must get respect for their new ideas.

  John Kao

  Ideas, People, New Ideas

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  People, Creative, Challenges

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  7 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Team, Successful, Important

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

  4 Copy quote

• Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.

  John Kao

  Creativity, Thinking, Breathing

  8 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Command And Control, Creative, Process

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

• You would not let your kids do whatever they want. So the challenge is to create accountability in a non-mechanistic way. You cannot come in with a clipboard and check off boxes and figure out why something has not been done on schedule.

  John Kao

  Kids, Accountability, Challenges

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Player, Giving, Different

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

  8 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Imagination, Use, Muscles

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Ideas, Two, Mark

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  6 Copy quote

• Obviously businesses do not operate like an artists' commune. Business involves deploying finite resources to achieve goals in a competitive environment to make money. That is something creative people understand.

  John Kao

  Artist, People, Goal

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Team, Creativity, People

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Kao

  Innovation, Capability, Invaluable

  6 Copy quote

• The manager's job - the impresario's job - is to preside over the company's efforts to jam so the business runs really well.

  John Kao

  Running, Jobs, Effort

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Views, Bridges, People

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• Creativity is not like the weather: You can do something about it. And you can measure it well enough to determine its effect on sales and profits.

  John Kao

  Creativity, Weather, Enough

  John Kao (2009). “Jamming: Art and Discipline of Business Creativit”, p.22, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Skills, Tunes, Example

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Teacher, Jobs, Creativity

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Kao

  Creativity, Skills, Organization

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

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