PILLAR 01
Mastering the How
Creativity as a teachable, learnable discipline.
PILLAR ONE OVERVIEW
Most people treat creativity like a personality trait. You have it or you don’t. I’ve spent four decades arguing the opposite. Creativity has vocabulary, grammar, and structure. You can teach it, practice it, and get better at it.
I learned this first from jazz. A jazz musician walks on stage without a script, but that freedom comes from thousands of hours of scales, chord theory, and listening. Improvisation sits on top of discipline. The same principle applies to brainstorming, to design thinking, to building a company.
When I launched the creativity course at Harvard Business School in the 1980s, the idea that you could teach innovation as a structured discipline felt radical. Fourteen years of teaching proved the point. Students who arrived believing creativity was a gift left with a repeatable operating system for generating, evaluating, and implementing ideas.
Key Ideas
The Jazz Metaphor
Jazz musicians produce coherent, collaborative output without predetermined scripts. They do it through internalised discipline, active listening, and acceptance of creative risk.
Jamming (1996)
Creativity as an Operating System
A personal creative operating system includes ideation methods, prototyping habits, feedback loops, and a practice of regular reflection.
Yale Course, Class 2
Facilitation as Creative Leadership
Running a brainstorm is a performance skill. You set the stage, create the conditions, manage energy and timing, then get out of the way.
Jamming (1996)
Design Thinking and Prototyping
Build to think, not think to build. Rapid prototyping, iteration, and user feedback loops are core methods in this pillar.
Yale Course, Classes 9–10
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity
1996
The foundational text. Jazz improvisation as a model for organisational creativity.
Yale Course, Class 2: Where We’ve Been
2026
Creativity 101: methods, practices, tools, and facilitation approaches.
Forbes: What Are Metaproficiencies?
2020
Cross-cutting skills like adaptation and learning agility.
THE JOURNEY
Explore other pillars that support my approach to creativity
02
Creative Mindset
The inner work of thinking differently. Discernment, empathy, struggle, awe.
03
AI & the Future
of Creativity
Protecting what makes us human when machines get smart. Cultivating what I call the 'human premium.'
04
Thinking across boundaries, leveraging poly cognitive and polyvalent capabilities.
The Polymath's Advantage
FOLLOW THE JOURNEY
A book, a course, a growing body of work, and a community of people re-imagining creativity for a new era. This is the beginning.