The Yin and the Yang of Corporate Innovation - NYTimes.com
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 12:02PM IN the hunt for innovation, that elusive path to economic growth and corporate prosperity, try a little jazz as an inspirational metaphor. Enlarge This Image In business as in jazz, the tension between training and improvisation can result in great new works, says John Kao, the innovation adviser (and pianist). That’s the message that John Kao, an innovation adviser to corporations and governments — who is also a jazz pianist — was to deliver in a performance and talk on Saturday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Jazz, Mr. Kao says, demonstrates some of the tensions in innovation, between training and discipline on one side and improvised creativity on the other. In business, as in jazz, the interaction of those two sides, the yin and the yang of innovation, fuels new ideas and products. The mixture varies by company. Mr. Kao points to the very different models of innovation represented by Google and Apple, two powerhouses of Silicon Valley, the world’s epicenter of corporate creativity.