Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity

It took a Chinese American student listening to jazz and jamming with a group of African Americans at a private boarding school to internalize the polar tensions between musical score and improvisation and come up with a formula for creativity. Kao, now a professor at Harvard Business School, has been using the jamming metaphor to teach creative entrepreneurship for 14 years. In business, the score is not a musical theme but an idea, process or question that takes on new dimensions when bandied about by a group. This business version of jamming, Kao says, is the creative advantage that can give a company a competitive edge. Kao tells how to audit and manage creativity and describes techniques for clearing the mind to render it receptive to the improvisational flow. Never was the need or the opportunity so great, he claims, as now amid the deluge of information descending from cyberspace. Chapters end with a list of ""riffs,"" or pithy tips for business leaders. Kao offers succinct advice cleverly packaged. (June)