What can Duke Ellington and Miles Davis teach entrepreneurs? Quite a lot, say Warwick academics
Entrepreneurs are like jazz band leaders, Ucbasaran argues, insofar as they have to "build creative tension and give individuals their heads" while working within the framework of a collective. They have to harness the "disparate egos of highly talented people" and somehow keep them working towards the same goal. "To the uninitiated, jazz seems like chaos, whereas the reality is that it's very ordered," she says. "Underpinning the structure is a long tradition of education and practice."
Like any business, jazz bands have products (concerts, gigs, recordings, etc) that must be marketed and sold, and have a range of stakeholders to satisfy (customers, audiences, peers, critics, etc), says Ucbasaran. "Further, like entrepreneurial managers, the leaders of musical groups must identify and exploit commercial opportunities to survive."
(The Guardian)
