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.

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

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

Now jamming - which is about collaborative improvisation - has to do with getting people together to be creative musically. But it is a very powerful metaphor for understanding the grammar of the creative process. It applies to business and to other pursuits as well.

There's real "right brain" creativity that goes into all of the organizational processes that a company utilizes and must continually reinvent in order to conduct its business. But there are also the "left brain" accounting functions that must continually ask how the company is doing financially and whether the creative processes are working for the bottom line.

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

If you are at Coca-Cola, the creative challenge is one of maintaining - rather than creating - a tremendous level of consumption for your products.