Tunes have notes and tempos and rules. If the tune is "All the Things You Are," you have to adhere to its structure and to the tradition behind that structure.

Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.

The challenge is to manage creative people so that the output is fruitful. The challenge is not to have an open environment and simply let them do whatever they want.

The impresario function is about intervening with the company's more administrative management structure. It is about trying to establish a sense of boundaries and budgets and milestones and so forth on a project that does not necessarily lend itself to milestones. It is about translating between the intimate interior environment of the creative work team and the company's need to make money. And finally, it is about positioning the fruits of the creative process in the marketplace and selling them.

Tunes have notes and tempos and rules. If the tune is "All the Things You Are," you have to adhere to its structure and to the tradition behind that structure.

An organization is really a factory for producing new ideas and for linking those ideas with resources - human resources, financial resources, knowledge resources, infrastructure resources - in an effort to create value. These are processes that you can map, with results that you can measure.

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.