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

thing and then try it again a different way, constantly recon-

ceiving ambiguous circumstances and variable materials into

coherent and valuable outputs.

Artful making differs from what we call industrial making,

which emphasizes the importance of detailed planning, as well

as tightly specified objectives, processes, and products. Its

principles are familiar: Pull apart planning and production to

specialize each; create a blueprint or specification, then con-

form to it; don’t do anything before you know you can do

everything; “Get it right the first time.” When industrial mak-

ers conform to plans and specifications, they say their prod-

ucts and processes ...