My new book, Creative Success Now, was just published! It’s a roadmap on how to ignite creativity and inspire creatives of all stripes to get their ideas out into the world and thrive in today’s world. I was inspired to write my new book thanks to my experience with hundreds of creatives, teaching at Yale University’s School of Music and coaching …
Innovation and Feedback: An Essential Step for Entrepreneurial Projects
Why is feedback essential to innovation? Let’s examine how students in my Innovation and Collaboration class at the Yale School of Music are learning this lesson through their semester projects. When we last left the music entrepreneurs , the class had explored the needs of today’s audiences and zeroed in on the problem of how to make classical music more relevant …
Today’s Audience For Classical Music: How to Make Classical Music Relevant and Accessible
Every fall, I have the privilege of teaching a project-based seminar to a group of budding music entrepreneurs at the Yale School of Music. The class, Creating Value Through Innovative Collaborative Projects (Music 621a), addresses the problem of how to keep classical music alive and vital in our culture. My goal is to equip my students with leadership and innovation …
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Tap into Passion and Purpose: How to Ignite Your Creative Career
This past week, I had the privilege of speaking on Creative Success Now: How to Ignite Your Passion and Purpose for Successful Creative Careers” to students at Yale University. My talk attracted a variety of students who were intrigued about creativity and turning their passion and purpose into a successful career. These included singers, composers, performers, an aspiring novelist, several …
Innovation for Music Entrepreneurs: Get Creative with Implementation
One of the hallmarks of my class at the Yale School of Music, Creating Value Through Innovative Projects, is that students learn by taking action. My seminar’s focus is how to generate innovative solutions to the most pressing problems in classical music today. Over the course of the past semester, my students worked collaboratively on four different creative projects. Three …
Ideation and Incubation: How Music Entrepreneurs Expand and Improve Their Creative Ideas
When we last left the students in my Innovation and Collaboration class at the Yale School of Music, they identified the key problems of their audiences. The next order of business was to come up with some creative ideas for solving these problems. We entered the phase of creative problem solving known as “ideation” where students have brainstormed using a variety of …
Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: What’s the Problem?
It’s exciting to observe the process of creative problem solving! Innovation can occur when you provide a solution to a problem that meets the deeper needs of your intended target audience. To do so, you need a good problem statement. In my Innovation and Collaboration Class at the Yale School of Music, my students have now coalesced around 4 project …
Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: Defining the Problems of Classical Music
My class at Yale on Creating Value Through Innovative Projects is off to a great start! The focus of my seminar is how musicians can generate innovative solutions to the most pressing problems facing classical music today and to work in collaborative groups to solve these problems. My goal is to make my students better thinkers so that they can lead …
Bang on a Can: Inspiring Innovation for Today’s Music Entrepreneurs
Last week, I had the privilege of participating on a panel examining the music powerhouse, Bang on a Can, as a case study in successful arts entrepreneurship. The panel, a Career Development session for composers and other musicians, was sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra as part of the Underwood New Music Readings, a program that discovers today’s brightest orchestral composers and …
Leadership For Arts Entrepreneurs: 4 Key Elements of Your Leadership Style
In my last post, I dissected the lessons of leadership from Itay Talgam’s TED Talk on conducting and leadership and Marin Alsop’s interview at Yale, and highlighted 4 key elements of a leadership style: Be Yourself Find a Mentor Learn from Failure Create a Relationship of Mutual Respect These lessons provided the backdrop for a call that I recently led with …