Selling the Idea of Flexibility

Improvisers and entrepreneurs more often than not tend to pride themselves on their flexibility, adaptability, and ability to create order out of situations of chaos. In most cases this confidence comes with good reason — these activities require intelligence, hard work, innovation, resourcefulness, as well as a willingness to question norms and try new things in order to achieve goals and objectives. Jam sessions and entrepreneurial projects require the same sort of skills, thought processes and mental states in order to pull off an effective performance, and can be said to be very similar to one another. (Starting a new company counts as performance art, as most entrepreneurs would agree.)

The skills and traits that make up an improviser/entrepreneur are highly personalized and its development can usually be said to be particular to the individual. Hence, both the improvisation and startup community tend to attract a lot of people that hold exceptional, unique, and often usual talents. Because these traits are so particular to the person that posses them, however, they often have trouble adjusting or falling into traditional career paths and lifestyles. Even well-intentioned attempts at integration is often met with failure or disaster since the general public seldom have the means of accommodating individuals who have skill-sets and ideas that are outside of the norm. In one way or another, people improvise or become entrepreneurs as a declaration of their independence from society’s mainstream, and exist as a community of exceptions.

Despite the tensions and frictions this can cause, society implicitly acknowledges the necessary function these pioneers provide, since they serve as the main antidote to cultural/technological stagnation by coming up with new innovations for sustainable future use. Most people have a strong fascination with the idea of “creating something out of nothing”, even if the interest may be tempered with a degree of caution and skepticism. The idea of the “Maverick Innovator” is still very prevalent and many strive to become part of that cultural narrative for themselves because it’s looked highly upon by society at large, at least within the United States.

The difficulty that innovators face is that it’s often difficult to convince the general public of the merits of their ideas, even when the ideas themselves are good. On one hand, most people are not opposed to new things, especially if it might lead to a better quality of life for themselves or the others around them. On the other hand, most aren’t usually willing to bear the risks and uncertainty that comes with participating in new ventures, especially when the possibility of failure is very high and very real. Herein lies the Catch-22 of innovation — an entrepreneur must provide to their supporters a vision of absolute certainty and inevitability, in the face of uncertainty and the unknown.

A metaphor for institutional giants learning the lessons of flexibility -- if you haven't noticed already, it's going to be pretty awkward.

As grandiose as this may sound, this is something that shouldn’t be too alien of a concept — if you’ve ever played in a band and jammed with your band mates, that can be considered an exercise in creating order out of chaos. As with all other things, improvisation is a skill that can be learned and refined if the will to do so is there. For a very long time doing this was very difficult due to the fact that there were no support or resources available for this purpose — this attitude, however, seems to have changed in recent years. There is currently a parallel trend happening between the business and music schools at colleges/universities where the teaching of entrepreneurship and improvisation has become more common.

The the rapid changes in technology and information systems during the last few decades has made the world more uncertain — as a direct result, the flexibility of the entrepreneurial mindset is becoming more of a necessity in order to effectively operate within today’s fast-paced world. Even traditional businesses and music organizations are gradually adapting to include some of the practices that entrepreneurs have been using for years. The tables have somewhat turned, and it’s likely that these trends will continue for some time in the future.

Although in some sense, maybe this might not be as radical of a change as some might think — independent thinking, creativity, pro-activity, curiousness/inquisitiveness, chaos management/organization, resourcefulness and flexibility are all traits that employers and organizations have always looked for in their candidates, irrespective of their time periods. It may just be that it is becoming more than norm, and the music around it is reflecting this change.

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