Organizations are about putting ideas through one or more types of gating procedures. In this way, ideas go from being a whim to becoming a project, from being a "skunk works" effort to becoming an official, mainstream effort, from being an unfounded program to a funded process, and so on.

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.

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

If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the challenge can be both large and subtle.

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.

Rather than managing by clarifying events, the creative process may require raising the level of uncertainty. Sometimes this can be done by issuing a creative challenge that has resonance in that it inspires the team to activity.

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