Design Thinking is all the rage these days in academic circles, often misused and overhyped as the perfect teaching tool. In fact, Design Thinking is an excellent process for advancing creativity and innovation when properly understood and applied. Design thinking is the human-centered design process that helps you understand the emotional needs of the people whose problems you are solving through …
Creativity for Music Entrepreneurs Part IV: 4 Steps to Develop and Improve Your Idea
What happens when you have come up with lots of big, juicy ideas for your innovative solution? Is that enough to create a workable solution to your problem? Not so fast! When we last left the music entrepreneurs in my Innovation and Collaboration class at the Yale School of Music, they had gone through the stage of the creativity problem …
The Value of Music in Post-Election America: How Musicians Can Make Make Music Relevant in Today’s World
What is the value of music in post-election America? I do not ordinarily talk about politics in my blog, but these are not ordinary times. Indeed, life changed for a lot of us this Election Day when the country shocked us by electing someone whose vitriolic campaign espoused values that contradict the very foundations on which our country was built: freedom, …
Creativity for Music Entrepreneurs Part III: Have Fun with Ideation
Now comes the fun part: ideation! This is the stage of the creativity problem solving process where you generate a lot of wild, crazy ideas in order to come up with an innovative solution to the problem you are solving. When we last left our music entrepreneurs in my Innovation and Collaboration Class at the Yale School of Music, the …
Creativity for Music Entrepreneurs Part II: 3 Steps to Clarify Your Problem
My class on Innovation and Collaboration at the Yale School of Music is designed to teach music entrepreneurs how to innovate by solving a problem near and dear to their hearts in the world of classical music. My students are creative individuals who are eager to do something meaningful with their music. They also want to come up with solutions that have …
Director of Development
Astrid’s sessions [at the 2016 Opera America Leadership Intensive] were, by far, my favorite. I have always considered myself a fairly self-aware person, but she helped me articulate those qualities and values that matter most to me; taught me how to identify my feelings and behaviors; and challenged my own pre-conceptions of myself. She made me think of myself as …
General Director’s Office, San Francisco Opera
[My favorite sessions at the 2016 Opera America Leadership Intensive were] Astrid’s by far! I really enjoyed her energy and the pace of her sessions. I felt that she gave us tools (such as the to do lists) that will help us apply what we learned immediately. – Claire Padden-Havens, General Directors’ Office, San Francisco Opera
Creativity For Music Entrepreneurs Part I: 5 Steps to Find Your Cause in the World of Classical Music
This semester, 16 students in my class on Innovation and Collaboration class at the Yale School of Music are tackling the issue of the sustainability of classical music in the 21st Century in order to get closer to the Ideal World of Classical Music. These students are not just superb musicians but they also aspire to be cultural leaders who want …
Director of Artistic Development and Mezzo Soprano
All of the sessions with Astrid [at the 2016 Opera America Leadership Intensive] were incredibly useful to me because I learned an immense amount about Leadership skills but also about myself….I will certainly apply the lessons learned about myself and my strengths from the sessions with Astrid. – Jennifer Rivera, Director of Artistic Development and Mezzo Soprano, Opera America Leadership Intensive …
Operations Manager
I think that I will most often use the skills picked up in Astrid’s session[at the 2016 Opera America Leadership Intensive], and particularly use her concept of letting my core values guide my priorities. I also think I will frequently use her communication style assessments to have a better understanding of the people I interact with at work. – Lydia …