The fine art of success – wishful thinking?

One lunch time this week I took the opportunity to visit the courtyard of Somerset House with a colleague to see the magnificent ‘circle of animals’ - sculptures of the signs of the Chinese zodiac by the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. 

http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/ai-weiwei-circle-of-animals-zodiac-heads

He is a thoughtful artist and I commend a visit to anyone who happens to be on the Strand in London with a few minutes to spare.  Ai Weiwei is perhaps as important a dissident as an artist.  He came into conflict with the authorities in China for demanding that they release the full list of the 5,300 plus school children who were killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.  There are people in China who believe the schools that  the children  were in collapsed because they were built with sub-standard materials allowed by corrupt officials.  Ai Weiwei is under arrest and his whereabouts remain unknown, but his opinions are widely known.

It reminded me that many famous artists and creative people are multi-talented and have had a big impact on the ‘real world’.  Indeed quite a few have been successful entrepreneurs .  The fine art of success explores this theme by discussing case studies of Madonna, Titian, Damien Hirst and others and the lessons they can teach about driving creativity and innovation in business.   The authors Jamie Anderson http://www.jamieandersononline.com/Biography.html ,  Jorg Reckhenrich http://www.reckhenrich.com/Reckhenrich_en/Hirst.html and and Martin Kupp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HU0dHKSowc  are based in business schools in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany.  They believe they have a serious point to make but some people will feel that this is not for ‘serious’ managers.  How would you feel about applying lessons from this book?  Is it just a fad?

The fine art of success has been entered in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship category of CMI Management Book of the Year in association with the British Library.   For more information on this and other entries go to  http://yearbook.managers.org.uk/