Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

As the world economy has moved increasingly from a manufacturing-based to a knowledge-based economy, the need for companies and employees to be innovative and agile becomes more and more critical. This book looks at how companies and employees can engineer ingenuity and innovation, how to manufacture, in a sense, the next great idea. Based on the research of Harvard Business School professor, Robert Austin, and the insight of Theater Director, Lee Devin, the book looks at how, through the metaphor of theater production, knowledge workers can achieve innovation on cue. Innovative companies and products win in today's economy, the companies that can generate innovation more often will win more often. This book will show companies how.

Table of Contents

Foreword.
Introduction.
1. What's Really Different About Knowledge Work.

2. Artful Making Relies on Emergence.

3. Artful Making is Iterative, Not Sequential.

4. The Prerequisite Conditions for Artful Making.

5. Artful Making as Part of the Shift to a Knowledge Economy.

6. Artful Making Turns Industrial Notions of Control Upside Down.

7. Artful Making Reconceives; Industrial Making Replicates.

8. Artful Making Requires a Secure Workspace.

9. Artful Making Embraces Uncertainty Instead of Protecting Against It.

10. Artful Making is Fiscally Responsible.

11. Artful Management.

12. A Final Word.

Bibliography.
Acknowledgements.
Index.