Archives for 2005

I’m off to Toronto this weekend (and Monday) to speak and to join the conversation for Re-Generation: The Healthy Arts Leader (ou en français), an arts management conference hosted by the Ontario Arts Council. With sessions on succession planning, mentoring, compensation, professional development, and other issues of worklife in arts and cultural management, the conference […]

There’s lots of chatter these days in the consumer products world (especially technology products) about the ‘end-to-end experience’ — or the start-to-finish engagement a consumer has with a particular product, from when they first hear of it, to when they perceive its marketing, to when they buy it, open its packaging, use it, and live […]

Last week, UK arts minister Estelle Morris suggested a distribution problem in England’s museums…with too much stuff hidden in city-based museum storehouses, and not enough out in the fringes. Said she: ”We want to see the cultural centre of gravity start to move from the capital. Part of this could involve sharing works more — […]

I frequently hear from foundation administrators and grants panelists who bemoan the dry and incomplete grant requests they receive…lacking the spark and storytelling you might expect from organizations focused on creative expression. But then when you look at their grant guidelines — dry and dull, sequential and uninspiring — it’s a bit easier to spread […]

According to Daniel Pink in this month’s Wired magazine, the logical left brain will soon be playing second fiddle to the creative and empathetic right brain as the engine of the American economy. (I know, it’s not exactly a new theory, but it’s always interesting to see how each version spins out.) In the excerpt […]

While digging around the web to write my recent entry on the Peak/End Rule, I stumbled on a fabulous list of other cognitive biases that any thoughtful manager should be watching for in him/herself or his/her staff. A ‘cognitive bias’ is a kind of blind-spot in our brains — the result of short-cuts or habits […]

Color commentary is still spinning out from last week’s dramatic departure of the Guggenheim’s board chairman Peter Lewis. The affluent and cantankerous insurance company CEO had finally come to blows with the tall and cantankerous Guggenheim director Thomas Krens. And it seems that Krens won this particular battle through the support of the remaining board. […]

How do we attach value to an experience after we’ve experienced it? It’s a fairly basic question, of importance to economists, marketers, product manufacturers, service providers, policy makers, and of course, arts managers. After all, if an experience is remembered as highly pleasurable or profound, an individual is much more likely to want to experience […]

Leo Kotkin had a piece in the Wall Street Journal last week on the growth of cultural facilities in the suburbs of America. Like most things cultural, the boom seems directly related to shifts in where people live — especially people with means: Since 1960, more than 90% of all population growth in America’s metropolitan […]

I received some supportive and thoughtful responses to my recent entry about the conference panel format and its annoying limitations as a means for sharing rich ideas. Some responses echoed the problems I identified, and let me know I wasn’t alone. Said one: I find most panel discussions ineffective, and not focused to the concerns […]