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.

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.

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.

Jazz has to work. It has to play with the audience and with the marketplace. I think that is relevant to business.

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.

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.

Every day, there are 770 million Cokes consumed, which means that there are 770 million purchasing decisions made each day regarding the product. To support those decisions, the company must constantly reinvest in its marketing links to its customers. As a result, a high level of creativity must go into everything the company does, from cause-related campaigns - Coca-Cola and its sponsorship of the Olympic Village in Atlanta, for example - to new catch phrases, commercials, marketing slogans, advertising campaigns and promotional tie-ins.