Reflections Using Arts Based Processes when Working with Centers of Excellence - Linda Naiman, Creativity At Work

Over the past year I have been invited by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world to introduce the arts as a catalyst for developing creativity, leadership and innovation within the organization. I’ve been working within specific business units of these global organizations, and I would describe these units as centers of excellence with an entrepreneurial appetite for creativity, innovation and the willingness to try something new. I’ve noticed the leaders who run these business units, track what’s on the leading edge, and invite “best of breed” to learn from. This approach, combined with sufficient resources, and sound-management practices, contributes to creating a culture that fosters innovation as well as excellence in business performance.

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The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest - Dan Ariely and Francisco Gino

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test
whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals’ ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Experiment 1). In addition, we find that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly than those in a control condition (Experiment 2) and that greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior explained the link between creativity and increased dishonesty (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, we demonstrate that dispositional creativity moderates the influence of temporarily priming creativity on dishonest behavior (Experiment 5). The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.

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How Much Do We Need To Know or Should We Know - The Conference Board Review - James Krohe Jnr.

In twenty years of the Internet age, big companies have come to know more about their customers, their suppliers, and their own operations than they ever did, or could. Information pouring in from sensors and points of sale enables businesses to know how to sell things to shoppers before they know they want them, fix machines before they break, reorder stock before it runs out. “Big data,” which McKinsey trumpeted in March as “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity,” is in fact the previous frontier with a new name.

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I am a Leader, Not A Manager - Harvard Business Review

One of Kent's friends — we'll call him Roy — is a master craftsman who owns a small business that makes custom wood furniture. After making some cutbacks in 2009, his little company still employs three fine woodworkers, an office supervisor/customer service rep, and an apprentice. What makes Roy unusual is that when he founded his firm a dozen years ago, he realized he knew nothing about business. And so he began reading serious books on the subject, as well as the Harvard Business Review and two or three business magazines.

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What Great Companies Know About Culture - Deidre H. Campbell - Harvard Business Review

Even in this unprecedented business environment, great leaders know they should invest in their people. Those companies who are committed to a strong workplace culture tend to perform well, and now they are featured prominently in a new ranking recently released by Great Place to Work Institute. Among the top performers on the 2011 World's Best Multinational Companies list are culturally-strong technology companies such as Microsoft, NetApp, SAS, and Google. But is there a direct correlation between employee investment and the balance sheet? As Prof. James L. Heskett wrote in his latest book The Culture Cycle, effective culture can account for 20-30 percent of the differential in corporate performance when compared with "culturally unremarkable" competitors.

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