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

Like senior managers at Sun, Adams and other directors at

People’s Light have faith that their process will deliver valuable

results on time. Their confidence in the process is based on the

design of the process itself, which assures that the ensemble

will have time for the first 50 laps, and that the progress of the

last 15 will emerge.

Emergence in Business

The idea that some actions in business cannot be predict-

ed but must emerge from a process, especially in conditions of

high uncertainty, is supported by management research on

strategy making. For example, Mintzberg and McHugh have

documented the success of “grassroots” strategy formation

that’