Art and Economy - How professional organizations can learn from creative disciplines Dirk Dobiéy, Vice President SAP AG with support from S. Kirsten Gay, Barbara Sokolow, Thomas Koeplin, Hendrik Achenbach and Lynne Meyer-Gay Introduction It took a while and a lot of hard work, but a cross functional team at SAP—the global leader in business software and software-related services —overcame the obstacles and soon will deliver a simplified and personalized web experience for partners. The feedback from the audience confirms the team’s effort was appreciated. As one partner stated when articulating feedback on the new experience, “Great home page—so simple to scan. Clean.” Figure 1: The new homepage for SAP partners before log in This project is a great example of how best practices derived from art and an artistic mindset can make a professional organization more successful and provide joy to those involved. “Unwavering persistence, Design Thinking, and superb cross-team collaboration produced a web experience that will make it easier for partners to manage and accelerate their business with SAP,” says Kathy Lopez, project co -lead and senior director of Partner Marketing and Communications. The ecosystem in which SAP operates, and in
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Art and Economy - How professional organizations can learn from creative disciplines
Di rk Dobi éy, Vi ce Presi dent SAP AG wi th support from S. Ki rsten Gay, Barbara Sokolow, Thomas Koepli n, Hendri k Achenbach and Lynne Meyer-Gay
Introduction
It took a while and a lot of hard work, but a cross functional team at SAP—the global leader in business
software and software-related services—overcame the obstacles and soon will deliver a simplified and
personalized web experience for partners. The feedback from the audience confirms the team’s effort was
appreciated. As one partner stated when articulating feedback on the new experience, “Great home
page—so simple to scan. Clean.”
Figure 1: The new homepage for SAP partners before log in
This project is a great example of how best practices derived from art and an artistic mindset can make a
professional organization more successful and provide joy to those involved. “Unwavering persistence,
Design Thinking, and superb cross-team collaboration produced a web experience that will make it easier
for partners to manage and accelerate their business with SAP,” says Kathy Lopez, project co-lead and
senior director of Partner Marketing and Communications. The ecosystem in which SAP operates, and in
particular the partners the company very closely collaborates with, is a cornerstone of the company ’s
strategy and critical to the success of the enterprise. The challenges for partners collaborating with SAP
were manifold, and the objective of the project was to enable SAP to become a company where our
partners would say “It’s easy to do business with them.”
Figure 2: The new homepage for SAP partners after log in
At SAP, this has been the third attempt at such an initiative, where the previous two did not complete
successfully. It is worth noting that many of the individuals involved in the final success also shared in the
previous failures.
The project started with a Design Thinking workshop that served as a fundamental starting point to
harmonize the thinking of the many stakeholders from different lines of the business participating in the
effort, who naturally come to such an event with varying viewpoints, perspectives and objectives. Experts
from all interested departments collaborated to form a single vision reflecting the major goals and
removing the pain points of SAP’s partners. After the workshop, the core team conducted extensive user
research. They spoke with SAP partners to develop a set of user requirements, make design decisions,
and build an interactive prototype which would help others to visualize the strategy and principles of the
new proposal. Meanwhile, more than 40 partners representing a wide range of company sizes,
geographies, and expertise participated in testing the prototype. The objective was to validate the team’s
approach and gain further insights. This process fueled development of even more enhancements and
thereby momentum. “The research distilled from partners proved to be hugely valuable as a resource to
help align viewpoints and establish common ground,” says Vincent Matyi, User Experience Team Lead. A
partner recently confirmed, “I was part of your 100 hours of interviews…you guys really came through…I
wasn’t sure if I was wasting my time again. Clearly , I wasn’t.”
Of course, it still wasn’t easy. Over the last two years, the project team endured a roller coaster ride of
setbacks—like anyone who is targeting major changes—including several rounds of cost cutting, scope
reduction, and approval processes. Some luck helped the team to persevere through changes in the
organization necessitating development of creative means of funding and sponsorship. But they kept
focused and made progress step by step. This effort didn’t go unnoted, as one partner pointed out: “I did
see your presentation [...] and you did a terrific job. Having worked in Channels for Novell, IBM, Oracle
and VMware, I’m fully aware of the time and effort it takes to 'herd the cats' and make sure you address all
the 'needs.' You’ve done a really good job.”
For everyone involved in the development of SAP’s new partner experience, the project’s completion
serves as an example where applying artistic principles and art-based processes led to real business
breakthroughs. Curiosity and observation, creativity and improvisation, collaboration and open
communication are core competencies for knowledge workers—in the future more than ever. In addition,
determination and persistence, agility and adaptability , supported by good leadership and a little bit of
luck, bred success. As we look back and ahead, it becomes apparent that the demands of our societies
and globalized, digitalized information economies require answers that go beyond the traditional notion of
work in organizations, and knowledge work in particular. Knowledge workers need to be enabled
differently in order to succeed in this accelerated and complex time we live in. A new approach to
leadership that embraces curiosity, creativity and collaboration is required. To survive, organizations need
to constantly innovate and look for sustainable ways to execute their mission. Some of the skills,
competencies, methods and approaches that are required for individuals, leaders and organizations can
be found in the arts, in particular by observing and learning how artists perform their work.
The purpose of this position paper is to stimulate a discussion targeted at increasing the contribution of
art-based methods and processes to professional organizations in order to accomplish a more balanced
business methodology and foster a sustainable approach to innovation in the worldwide economy. There
are three distinct—yet interrelated—concepts represented in this paper:
A set of transversal sk ills required for knowledge workers of all disciplines to succeed in the
information age;
A leadership approach that enables art-based processes in addition to the already established
management disciplines such as structure, processes and fiscal responsibility ;
A blueprint for the elastic enterprise capable of continuously succeeding despite constant change
and a high degree of uncertainty and the continued acceleration of technical innovations.
The main focus of this paper is on skills and competencies that can be observed in the arts and have a
high relevance for knowledge workers of all disciplines. The paper also contains smaller sections
introducing a new approach to leadership and the idea of the elastic enterprise.
An art-based skill set for future knowledge workers One art genre does not prevail over another. While some individuals are more attached to the visual arts ,
others have an affiliation to music, dance, theatre, literature or any other art category. What all art genres
have in common is they support the emergence of a skill set that is desperately needed in the information
age. But what are those skills? It is European policy in the educational sector to place an emphasis on
developing transversal sk ills. Examples of transversal skills are the ability to think critically, take initiative,
problem solve and work collaboratively, all needed to equip individuals for today's varied and
unpredictable career paths. Transversal skills can also be called cross competencies or generic sk ills. In
North America, “Traditional academic disciplines still matter, but as content knowledge evolves at lightning
speed, educators are talking more and more about process skills, strategies to reframe challenges and
extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.”1 Various schools and
colleges have started to put more emphasis on teaching not only creativity, innovation, change, but also
the importance of failure.
Knowledge workers in professional organizations, both profit and not-for-profit, can learn important skills
and competencies from art-based processes and methods. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google,
made this comment a decade ago: “I believe that human values ultimately win out over mechanistic values
or technology for its own sake in an increasingly technological world. Companies, especially high-techs,
are not machines. They are collections of tremendously motivated and creative people, and it is their
intrinsic motivation and their creativity that makes all the difference.”2 Tim Leberecht, chief marketing
officer of the global design and innovation firm Frog, also commented in a blog post on the TV show
CNNMoney at the end of 2012. “Indeed, the ’art’ of business has become more important as the ‘science’
grows ubiquitous. As Big Data and sophisticated analytical tools allow us to make our processes more
efficient, intuition and creativity are fast becoming the only differentiating factors among competitors. Like
any ‘soft asset,’ these qualities cannot be exploited, only explored. And like artists, innovators must
cultivate creative habits to see the world afresh and create something new. Like art, true innovation has
the potential to make our lives better. It connects and reconnects us with deeply held truths and
fundamental human desires; meets complexity with simple, elegant solutions; and rewards risk -taking and
vulnerability.”3
But is art just a mere ideal, or is it a real alternative to the way we work in professional organizations going
forward? Rob Austin and Lee Devin published their book Artful Mak ing: What Managers Need to Know
about How Artists Work in 2003 and commented:
There’s often a disparaging implication that art-like processes are immature, that they
have not yet evolved to incorporate the obviously superior methods of science. The
1 Laura Pappano, “Learning to Think Outside the Box: Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline,” in The New York Times Online, February 5, 2014.
2 Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google in Rob Austin and Lee Devin, Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work, Prentice Hall, , 2003, p. XIX.
3 Tim Leberecht, “What entrepreneurs can learn from artists”, CNN Money; December 21, 2012.
art versus many business disciplines is that “artists are craftspeople. They ‘think by making’ and unite the
‘hand and the head,’ as sociologist Richard Sennett describes in his book The Craftsman. “It has both a
physical dimension (exhibiting mastery in craftsmanship) and a meta-physical dimension (connecting a
new product, service, or business model with the broader zeitgeist and cultural climate).”10
A lot has been written on creativity and innovation in professional organizations and by now some
excellent methodologies, such as Design Thinking and Strategic Visioning, have emerged as a general
framework for leading innovation processes in a business context. “Design Thinking is a human-centered
approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the
possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success,” Tim Brown, president and CEO of
IDEO, states on the company web page. As a method, it is structured into three “spaces” to keep in mind:
inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the
search for solutions. Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas. Implementation
is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives. The Grove’s Strategic Visioning™ process
engages an entire organization in combining its best hindsight and foresight in aligned action. It uses
large, graphic templates to step groups through the development of traditional strategic analysis, creative
visioning work, focused action planning, and organization-communications design. The model illustrates
an optimal path through these activities and invites variations and improvisation. Many organizations have
started to train their members to use such methods of which there are plenty more and use them to
support collaborative strategy and innovation processes in their organizations. However, there is a missing
key component that is often overlooked when discussing creativity: the individual knowledge worker.
Methods like Design Thinking and Strategic Visioning can help to set certain, yet quite flexible,
boundaries. They provide a framework that helps to avoid pitfalls such as putting personal preference
before customer needs. Yet the picture is incomplete if we do not focus as well on individual knowledge
workers and enable them to act like artists and to see their work thus as creating pieces of art. One piece
at a time, one person at a time. Like for artists, also for knowledge workers the hand and the head need to
be in sync.
A key theme in art and beyond is the notion of talent, and even genius is used frequently to illustrate a
border that common people cannot cross, hence separating them from the gifted ones. Compared to
some of the great women and men of the past, it is hard for many to believe they are creative and
innovative or that they have talent. But everyone has talent, is curious and creative from birth. Sir Isaac
Newton famously said, “If I can see further than anyone else, it is only because I am standing on the
shoulders of giants,” and Tim Leberecht adds, “Artists are conduits and not ’masters of the universe.’”
Most artists—painters, sculptors, writers, filmmakers, or musicians—will admit that they derive their
inspiration from a spiritual sphere that goes beyond their individual creativity and skills. This applies to
10
P. Rixhon (2008). “Innovation leadership: Best practices from theatre creators” in Führung, Innovation und Wandel (Becker L. et al.
eds.), pp. 197-215, Symposion.
innovators, too. Whether they are spiritual or not, humility suits them well, as the social web and its wave
of crowd-based collaborations have rendered the myth of the lone genius obsolete.”11
Also Rob Austin and
Lee Devin confirm that “although art-based processes realize the full capabilities of talented workers and
can benefit from great worker talent, by no means do they require exceptional or especially creative
individuals. Nor does great individual talent ensure a valuable outcome. A (theatre) company of
exceptionally talented big stars can (and often will) create a less effective play than one made up of
ordinarily talented artists who have, through hard work , learned how to collaborate.”12
So if we look
beyond talent and genius—which is a special gift that some possess, what is it that knowledge workers
can learn or to be precise, learn again, from artists? For individuals to participate in the act of creation,
certain traits are helpful, for instance problem solving and effective collaboration.
“Artwork is really just 'sublimated problem-solving’”
Eleanor Blair, Painter
Problem solving is already a creative process as it relates to coming up with new and worthwhile ideas
(both incremental and radical concepts) that will be used in later stages of an innovation process. Problem
solving is to address different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways.
Skills required for problem solving include:
Challenging: Identifying and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to
better solutions (and accept being challenged). “Artists are contrarians. Artists can see the ‘cracks
through which the light gets in, ’ as the old adage goes. Likewise, great innovators come up with
solutions to problems because they see what is missing. They are eccentric, which means they
literally view things from the fringes. Both artists and innovators see the world as it could be. They
look upon our world, as Proust would say, with ‘fresh eyes.’ You might also call that vision.”13
Connecting the dots. “Artists are holistic, interdisciplinary thinkers. Artists can connect dots and
take things out of their original context. Likewise, innovators contextualize and re-contextualize,
mash up and remix, and embrace new insights and ideas that lead to unexpected, unlikely, and
often serendipitous conclusions (among the most famous examples of such "accidental
innovations" are the pacemaker or 3M's (MMM) post-it notes).”14
Striving for simplicity. A core aspect is the ability for abstraction; the act of taking away and
separating as a prerequisite for simplification by targeting the bigger picture and being able to
derive the essence while not losing the overall meaning. Abstraction supports the idea of “seeing
the bigger picture” by means of reducing complexity. The painter Roger Hilton comments that
“abstract art is the result of an attempt to make pictures more real, an attempt to come nearer to
the essence [of painting].” Abstraction is not only found in visual art. “For one, poetry teaches us
to wrestle with and simplify complexity.” Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told The
11
Tim Leberecht, “What entrepreneurs can learn from artists”, on CNN Money; December 21, 2012. 12
Rob Austin and Lee Devin (2003), Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddl e River, p XIXII, XXIV. 13
Tim Leberecht, “What entrepreneurs can learn from artists”, on CNN Money, December 21, 2012. 14