Economist.com | The entertainment industry
“…Harder times are reminding the (entertainment) industry of the critical importance of creating good content. But that means managing the tensions between artists and suits…”
Interesting article in the Economist about managing and well, enabling creativity to flourish in an organisation. HBO is a really interesting example, as they seem to manage creative risk and achievement without screwing up the business side. I’m becoming increasingly interested in this aspect of business – I think the lessons; don’t create structures that bore staff, reward risk, etc. are crucial to all companies, not just the cool tv and film businesses. A much more in-depth article on HBO and business creativity in fastcompany.
I don’t think the majority of companies achieve this, not through deliberate prevention, but simply because they don’t regard creativity as important enough to worry about. No doubt I’ll be reading Tom Peter’s books etc. soon. Mind you, I noticed that Francis Ford Coppola used De Bono’s thinking technique in the making of the Godfather dvd- it’s the one where you assess everything from the viewpoint of “what could I do to screw this up?” The act of listing all the *wrong* ways to do something in fact makes the correct approach more obvious. Which is a very meandering way of saying if Francis Ford Coppola reads De Bono and ilk, then there’s got to be something to it :-)