Posted by:
Brad Kreiger
Corporate and Industry Marketing

John Kao — aka the “innovation Sherpa” led off today’s session with a keynote that challenged the CRE community to sharpen their competitive advantage with innovation through the context of bebop, Zen masters and the piano. Kao, who’s a leader in driving innovation for the likes of businesses, organizations and governments (and a pretty wicked pianist himself), believes that the high-five, feel-good corporate culture approach to innovation is only a small part of the business innovation imperative. Kao referenced a piece of advice that jazz pianist Thelonious Monk once gave a budding musician: play the same piece of music 200 times a day. Point being, companies need to take a just-do-it approach to work at innovation, not just talk about it.

Jazz builds on the harmonics and musical rules long established through the ages, but makes something new of it through improvisation. So, should we as leaders in business balance our experience with new thinking to find the ‘sweet spot’ of innovation?

For CRE, this means leading the global conversation to redefine “the workplace.” Koa, thinks of the new workplace as a “global jazz club” providing just the right atmosphere and context for the improv of today’s knowledge worker. Many corporate offices still resemble the cube farms of the industrial revolution. But that’s changing rapidly as groups like Hub unite cause, business and space in new ways. You can still hear the tune, but the notes are being improved in bold new ways.

So, what would Monk do? Probably the opposite of what we’d expect. And that’s the whole idea.