Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity

In today's competitive environment, creativity is no longer an option. Companies that understand how to manage creativity in their people, organize for creative results and willingly implement good new ideas will triumph.

In Jamming, John Kao also offers an approach that demystifies a topic traditionally confounding to businesspeople everywhere. He begins by showing how creativity, like the musical discipline of jazz, has a vocabulary and a grammar. It is a process, and because of that it can be observed, analyzed, understood, replicated, taught and managed. He explains how creativity needs a particular environment in which to blossom and grow. Like musicians in a jam session, a group of businesspeople can take an idea, challenge one another's imagination and produce an entirely new set of possibilities. Kao reveals how managers can stimulate creativity in their employees, explores the impact of information technology on creativity, looks at the globalization of creativity and shows how to ensure the loyalty of people who design, build and deliver today's vital products and services.

John Kao is academic director of the Managing Innovation program at Stanford University. A former Harvard Business School professor, he is founder of several companies in the fields of biotechnology, film, and multimedia. A lecturer and adviser to numerous companies, Kao is also a member of the Global Business Network. He lives in San Francisco, CA.