What making music can teach business
business and doing music have a lot in common. Both require, in equal measures, skill and passion. Both use legacy and, at the same time, plan to lose the baggage to create something new — innovate.
The late David Bowie provided a precious tip in this respect: 'I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people's expectations. If you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little bit further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in.
Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.' This is the mantra not only for innovation but also for scaling up, whether for nimble startups and SMEs, or for behemothic conglomerates. Go to the deep end.
The notion that an entrepreneur needs to be a Bowiean artist in constant innovation mode may not seem to fit at first. But the comparison is apt.
'Hard' skills, whether playing instruments or sound production, are akin to money management. The 'soft skills', whether producing music to encapsulate emotions or producing products and services and connect with the market, is the real business of business.
Music, like any product or service, is ultimately made for consumption. There are no new notes, yet there are infinite variations.
One heavy hint that music — whether Bismillah Khan's evaporative notes on the shehnai or Bowie's generous soundscapes — provides to business is that one needs to put the horse of song/music or product/service before the cart of marketing it. Music-making and 'businessing' are, therefore, consumption procedures. And the market always waits for new sounds.
