Editors note
In recent years, there has been a remarkable growth in the use of arts programs by businesses to meet a wide range of their organizational learning and employee training needs. In the USA alone, dozens of Fortune 500 corporations and countless smaller firms employ arts-based learning to foster creative thinking, promote the development of new leadership models, and strengthen employee skills in critical areas such as collaboration, conflict resolution, change management, presentation/public performance, and intercultural communication.
We therefore believe that the time is right for a journal to dedicate a full issue to the strategic implications and practical dimensions of arts-based learning in business.
Recent surveys consistently identify imagination, inspiration, inventiveness,improvisational ability, collaborative and inter-cultural skills, spontaneity,adaptability, and presentation as among the most sought-after attributes of business leadership. These qualities are frequently summed up in a single word– creativity. Clearly, artists have profound insights into creativity,gained from years of hands-on experience, backed by specialized training and fostered by carefully honed skills. Their knowledge represents a formidable resource, waiting to be tapped by companies in search of creative solutions and managers striving to enable, empower and engage their employees’imaginative and inventive powers.
The growing use of arts-based learning reflects a dramatic shift in the boundaries that previously defined the limits of experience deemed relevant to the business world – a shift triggered by profound technological and social changes that transformed the culture of business over the past decade by favoring companies inventive enough to find their own ways forward, flexible enough to respond quickly (and competently) to the unexpected, and spontaneous enough to lead change effectively.
This issue features separate interviews with three corporate leaders who have concluded, from their own direct experience, that there are valuable business lessons to be learned from the insights and skills of artists: Harold G. (Terry)McGraw, Chairman and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies; George Stalk, Senior Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group, Inc.; and James Hill, Vice-President(Home and Personal Care, Western Europe) of Unilever. We have also included an interview with two leaders who have spent years integrating arts-based learning into corporations, Harvey Seifter and Tim Stockil, to give our readers insight into the design, implementation, and impact of a broad range of these programs.
We then move on to a more specific exploration of arts-based learning in action. Maxwell Anderson takes the reader into the art world for an investigation of visual literacy and a Quality Instinct, explaining how both can benefit businesses. Michael Gold and Steve Hirshfeld break jazz improvisation into five behaviors – passion, autonomy, listening, risk and innovation– that are also crucial to businesspeople, and explain how jazz can contribute to their development in business. Richard Stock and John Osburn explain how they use techniques drawn from dance, theater, and music to quantifiably improve the performance of engineering students. Robert Steed explains how, over the past 17 years, he has developed theatrical replicas of internal business situations to help leaders understand their behavior.
Finally, we have a series of articles to help put learning-oriented arts-business partnerships in a broader context. In a brief article, Lotte Darsøsummarizes the profusion of worldwide opportunities for learning about arts-business relationships. Kevin Daum, a successful entrepreneur with a theatrical background, explores the value of arts-based learning for entrepreneurs through case studies of individuals who adapted their careers in different arts to start successful businesses in seemingly unrelated fields. Michael Spencer explores what business and the arts need to understand about each other before business brings in artists.
Following the articles is an annotated bibliography. We sought contributions from experts currently working in this area. They recommend the books and articles that have been especially worthwhile to them, and explain why.
We deeply thank the Journal of Business Strategy and its editor, Nanci Healy, for inviting us to produce this special issue. We also thank the Arts& Business Council of Americans for the Arts and its Executive Director Gary Steuer, who have provided invaluable support to our efforts. We hope many of the readers will be sufficiently inspired and intrigued by what they read to follow up with direct contacts with some of our authors.
Harvey Seifter and Ted BuswickJune, 2005
Harvey SeifterFounder and director of Creativity Connection, a program of the Arts & Business Council of Americans for the Arts; President of Seifter Associates, an international consulting firm; and Executive & Artistic Director of Flushing Town Hall, a center for the visual and performing arts. He has led major arts organizations, including Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Magic Theatre, and is the author of Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s Only Conductorless Orchestra. E-mail: hseifter@aol.com
Ted BuswickDirector of Publications for The Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group. Academically, while teaching from high school through graduate school, he prepared to be a K-12 arts administrator before going into business. He has practical experience in the arts as a theatre director, actor, singer, playwright, and poet. He is the co-author of Thinking Beyond the Facts, a book about poetry and business, and Slate Art: The Essential Guide (both forthcoming). E-mail: mailtoBuswick.ted@bcg.com
