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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.