Looking to get an edge over the competition? Get a muse, says Michael Schrage, research fellow with the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the Imperial College [London] Business School.
PYMNTS.com recently caught up with Schrage to discuss his recent blog entry, “To Inspire Innovation, Get a Muse.”
Related: The New CIO: Chief Invasiveness Officer?!?
Why should your business have a muse? How does it benefit the innovation process?
I think we need to draw a distinction between ‘the business’ and the individuals who lead and manage the business. The point of the post was to challenge those who care about creativity and innovation to rethink where the got their inspiration and ideas. More particularly, what individuals or themes were particularly evocative or energizing. If you’re designing fashion, Audrey Hepburn makes a heckuva muse. If you’re helping design – as I once did – the first generation of ‘software pets’ for personal computers, you might find a muse in the way your best friends love and play with their dogs.
The question is less about the innovation process, per se, and more about what really intrigues and excites us as individuals. I’m more interested in the notion of an individual muse than an institutional one. A leader or manager who believes – as I do – that it’s important to brink a sensibility and a spark to new value creation probably wants a muse as much as a mentor to inspire them.
Who might be a potential muse for the following sectors (both serious and silly answers welcome!)
You know, this is a ‘funny’ serious as well as a ‘serious’ serious invitation because – if we take brand seriously – it’s clear that the muse for the folks running Amex Platinum should be different than one for Amex Green. CapOne clearly has settled on the delightfully double-edged Alec Baldwin as its current muse – and I think that works a little better than Vikings with English accents. It’s easy, in fact, to see how Mastercard’s famous ‘Priceless’ campaign could have its moments inspired by a muse who evokes those transcendent instances.
Again, here’s where a leadership has the challenge of entertaining a muse who aligns with both the brand value proposition and the way new value is created and debated inside the bank. I don’t think Regis & Kelly quite cut it as muses for TD Bank…but clearly, the bank wants to position itself as a place that’s inspired by and cares about the people who watched their show. HSBC’s muse should be a guy like Tyle Brule, the ridiculously globetrotting and design-centric magazine editor and Weekend FT columnist.
I think Fortuna – the goddess of luck – would be best for Citi; Mephistopheles is a natural for Fannie Mae.
My tongue-in-cheek response would be Carrie Fisher, the Star Wars actress turned novelist/comedienne. Her line that ‘instant gratification isn’t soon enough’ neatly captures the convenience and immediacy these services strive for. More seriously, they should look to industrial designers like Jonathan Ive or Hartmut Esslinger.
That’s obvious and elementary: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the Imperial College [London] Business School. His research and advisory work focuses on the role of models, prototypes and simulations as collaborative media for managing innovation risk and opportunity. But his work with CIOs and IT vendors ranging from Microsoft to ATT to Oracle to Facebook puts him in close contact with the difficult operational issues associated with implementing new tools, new technologies and new digital media to the enterprise.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More