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.

I would argue that the management of creativity requires a skill set that's relatively different from the traditional management skill set that is appropriate to a large, complex, industrial-era organization.

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

The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.

The larger the price tag, the more you have to adopt what I call the postmodern management approach. What I mean by that is that you have to use everything when you make a decision.

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.

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