Latest / Trumponomics / Most Companies Talk Creativity; Few Walk It. Art Can Help

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Most Companies Talk Creativity; Few Walk It. Art Can Help · Trumponomics

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Six investment bankers walk into an arts studio. No, that's
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: not the start of the joke. Turns out they needed
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: to feel safe and be left alone to do what Well,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: feel safe and be left alone with their thoughts or
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: waste of time? Hardly who knew these folks were also needy?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Aren't they? The masters of the universe? Amy Whittaker of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: New York University tells us why Amy's written about and
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: taught the intersection between finance, economics, and art. Welcome to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Benchmark, a show about the global economy. I'm Daniel
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: moss I write and edit global economics for Bloomberg View,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and I'm Scott Landman and economics editor with Bloomberg News
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: in Washington. Amy, it's so great to have you with us.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me on. Great to be here.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: You're the author of art thinking how to carve out
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: creative spice in a world of schedules, budgets and bosses.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Well we'll get to those last three qualifies in just
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a second, but I want to come to this phrase
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that you use that's originally attributed to Daniel Pink m
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: f I is the new MBI explain. I think It's
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: one of these things that relates to the stereotypes that
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: we all have of art business, and even the sexy
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: overlap of art and business. When Daniel Pink wrote that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in the Harvard Business Review in two thousand four, I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: already had an m b A and I was studying
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: for an m f A and painting in London. I
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: would show up at the studio and my colleague painter
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: would be in three piece pen stripe tails, painting at
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: nine in the morning, having been out all night. And
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: that is not something that ever happened when I was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: in business school. I think the idea is that creativity
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: is really important in business. So that's an idea we've
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: had at least since Shupiter. But the question is really
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: how culturally we make space for that. Now. Does the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: m f A is a new m b A paradigm
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: survive the post two thousand a night world. The post
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight world is a great example of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: art as a really really broad process. This idea that
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: we live in a point a world and then something happens,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: whether we do it ourselves or it happens outside of
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: our control, that completely turns the world upside down and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: changes all of our assumptions the idea of the m
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: f A as the new m b A. On the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: one hand, it survives in perpetuity because all of us
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: have a creative and a practical self and need more
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: space to own both. And on the other hand, you
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: could easily say that two thousight was the result of
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: overly creative thinking and markets and about risk. Now let's
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: let's go back to what Dan talked about at the top,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: which was the six investment bankers who walk into an
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: art studio. How does your training in art square with
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: that picture that we're painting? That picture with words that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Dn just painted, and you invoted six, how many showed up?
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I yielded six. I invited about thirty five. Now I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: probably invited ten. The first year I was in art school,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we had a show at the end of the year,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and for some reason, honestly, probably dealing with my own
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: vulnerability getting back to making art after having an MBA,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I decided that there was this question of who's an
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: artist and what kind of work gets made. So think
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: of the kind of art you've seen that makes you
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: most skeptical about modern and contemporary art, Like a hundred
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: bicycle pump sealed in a can of large Joseph boys,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: or something that's an event or a you know, a
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: broom and a bucket with an extensive wall label. I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: was kind of thinking about the frame of art, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I thought, everyone is an artist. Everyone's neatly creative. So
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I invited some friends. None of them were actually investment bankers,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: because the art studio building closed at ten pm and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: none of the investment bankers are off work at that time.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It was investment managers and attorneys. And there are six
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of them who came, and I have to say, you know,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the most important thing was to leave them alone and
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: let them do their own thing. And they were hilarious
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and brave. There's a guy called Guy who was an
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: economist through and through, who came and made an abstract
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: artwork and then came back the second week and completely
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: changed the artwork in a way that requires all the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: moral courage you'll ever bring to a painting. My own
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: tutor and art school stop by to tell me he
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: really liked the direction my work was taking, and uh,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I think it just reminded me that everyone has this
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  Speaker 1: capacity to be an artist. And I mean that in
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the sense of the exact moment you have a paint
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  Speaker 1: brush in your hand and you have to put it
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: on a canvas. All of us have that moment in
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: our daily lives, in our time in the art studio,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: figuratively speaking, and so it was really fun fun to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: watch that. Now some of our listeners might and I'm
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: wrestling with this myself. It can sometimes seem a little
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: frivolous to link art to the serious, hard decisions that
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: take place in a safe suite. It's trilled down a
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: little bit. What is the link? I think we actually
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: live in a time when the art world is a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: bit insulated from its own civic, economic, and political importance
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: outside of itself. When I talk about art, I don't
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: mean paintings and museums. I mean the human capacity for creativity,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: the thing that will become increasingly important as work gets automated,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the thing that only people can do. So the way
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I think about it is kind of folkasy, but it's
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: in terms of my parents and some thing that my
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: father once said he was a neurologist and our mother
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: is a medievalist. And he was once asked how they
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: got along being in such different fields, and he said,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: He was in the business of saving lives, but she
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: was in the business of making lives where it's saving,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And I always loved that because they did the opposite.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He helped people with quality of life issues like headaches
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and the inability to walk, and she helped people with
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: basic survival skills like writing and complete sentences. So I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: think the reason art matters in the c suite is
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: because it represents a spaciousness of curiosity and skepticism. And
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter a hundred percent. It matters in a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: portfolio since that you just need some space for it.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: You can think of it as the alternatives allocation in
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: your investment portfolio. You'd never want to be a hundred
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: percent in bitcoin, but you might want to own a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: little bit of it. So what does that have to
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: do with the term creative destruction? You did mention Jupiter earlier.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: He's credited with coining that phrase. Why is he so
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: important in your work? What does that have to do
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: with art? The idea of creative destruction, I think is
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the original way that economics as a field grappled with
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: creativity because economics traditionally is based on the idea of competition.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So Sjupiter is making a case for creative destruction that
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you have to think imaginatively or you will be competed away.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: And I think all of us can relate to this
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: idea that ultimately there's no such thing as stasis. There's
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a constancy of change. You know, if you had an
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: amazing haircut in night four, it's probably not still an
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: amazing haircut. If you had a great business model in
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the industry you're in is evolved beyond that. So for me,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I'm less interested in the destruction part of it, which
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: is fear based, right, you better be creative or you're
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: going to be in trouble, and more about it as
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a form of expansiveness and the root of being able
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to bring your whole person or your actual sense of
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: self and judgment into the workplace. Now, one of the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: words in the title of your book is budgets, And
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the reason I'm raising that word specifically is most companies
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like to talk about words like creativity and certainly give
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: voice to its importance. They also don't like to be
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: too dependent on one particular product. Yet number crunches can
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: kill an idea before it's even born. Now, with art,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you don't necessarily know what you're creating. So like, that's
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: even worse for a number crunch er, isn't it. It is,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It's terrible, it's the worst. It's it just is. But
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: it's the It's the kind of risk that's worth taking.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I think the worst thing that can happen in the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: workplace is to get a perfect answer to a question
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and then realize that you're asking the wrong question. In
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the first place, a number cruncher can get a perfect
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: answer to the wrong question. I think the reason art
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: matters is that art is part of the compass. It's
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: part of the orientation for how you move forward when
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: you don't have a template, when the past patterns are
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the only thing that will help you in the future.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And I don't think this idea is unrooted from expertise
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: in finance already Oslaft to motor in who teaches valuation,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and y U has a new book on narrative versus
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: numbers and the necessity of both. I'm in no way
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of suggesting that you shelve your analytic self. I'm suggesting
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that your analytic self is brought to life by the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: other parts of yourself that are creative and imaginative amy.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: One way maybe we can bring this discussion more into
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: global economics is to talk about a subject that we've
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: covered on this program before um, which is the you know,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: why productivity has been so low in recent years, why
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: growth has been low in this recovery. We've had Robert
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Gordon and Eric Brynjolfson on on the podcast before. Gordon,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: as you probably know, talks about how technological advances haven't
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: compared in recent years to the ones that were you know,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: say a hundred years ago, like the invention, invention of electricity, plumbing,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and so forth, you know, things that probably required some
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of the art thinking that you mentioned. Do you feel
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: or have you seen that in a historic sense there
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: is less of this art thinking today that can drive
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the economy or the economies of the world. I think
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: one of the challenges is that we live in an
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: era of short term measures of success quarterly earnings. Electricity
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: is a great example. Electricity. The original charity experiments were
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: not done with an outcome in mind. They were done
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: as a side project out of curiosity. No one really
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: understood how they would work and how important they would become.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: There's a very beautiful essay called the usefulness of useless knowledge.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: About this if you want to check it out. So
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I think we lack the capacity right now for what
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I would call a cathedral business. Not a business that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: returned some money to venture capitalists in eighteen months to
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: four years, but businesses that are important and have the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: kind of nobility of creating, you know, shar Tra or
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame. But we lack the ability to embrace that
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: time horizon. We lack the ability to be essentially value
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: investors in that particular sense. Now you've talked about companies here,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: what about the people who populate the companies? What about
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: executives who are just stuck. They've had a great track record,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: but they know they need to get to another place
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to adapt to avoid their own destruction. How does art
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: help them? I think this is such a great question
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: because I think one of the difficulties in that scenario
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: is what you do once you've already been successful. And
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: this happens in anything. It definitely happens if you're making
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a painting. But you develop a set of skills, they
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: serve you the new world it or requires a different
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: set of skills, or this is the creative instruction moment
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: where you have to edge out a little bit of
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: your past success to make room for a new experiment.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And I think the thing that we need the most
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: in that situation is culturally what I would call a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: holding environment, a space in which it's okay to take
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: risks and to share vulnerability about moving forward. And most
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: workplaces don't have space for that. And has that gone
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: down in recent years? I mean, would you say, based
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: on your research, there's less of that happening today than
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: there wasn't the past, or or you know, how would
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you characterize it? I think there's a delicate cocktail of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: distractions of technology and enhance stabilities to measure outputs that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: makes it really hard to have those conversations, because those
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: conversations sometimes feel like wasting time. New projects just feel
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: unfamiliar and slightly ridiculous, And at least for me, if
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I if I come up with a good idea, there
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: were fifty awful, hilariously bad ideas in front of it,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: and fifty more that weren't even funny. That we're just
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: like just bad. And to be able to have colleagues
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: where you have the capacity conversationally to run through those
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: ideas and to have tools in the workplace for clearly
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: identifying the questions and values that are driving you from
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the outset, so that once you get to those ridiculously
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: bad ideas, you can discuss them without it feeling serious
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: like you're about to break the whole place. If you
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: know why you're having the conversation, and if that's established,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: then there's a lot more space for kind of working
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: through what the different possibilities are to answer the question.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: To get back to the executive for a second, how
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: many seasoned executives who have spent decades at the same
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: company done pretty well for themselves are prepared to use
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: art to take a leap to destination known? Aren't they
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: trying to have some sense of what the destination is?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: But you seem to be saying forget all that. The
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: premise of art thinking is that if you're making a
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: work of art in any field, you're not going from
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: a known point A to a known point B. You're
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: inventing point B. And a manager, seasoned manager in a
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: large corporation has a portfolio of projects. You can picture
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: BCG growth share matrix. They're all the different boxes of
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: things that you know, the cow and the dog and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the star and the question mark, and what we're talking
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: about here is a part of the whole. We're talking
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: about the question mark. We're talking about the things that
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: have high potential but are not yet demonstrated. And I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: think that the biggest thing I would say to that
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: executive is that we have archetypes right now of what
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: a creative manager is that I honestly think are a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: little bit outdated. We picture someone who's a guru, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Steve Jobs is an amazing human being in an incredible
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: visionary But I think what we actually need, or what
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I would call good enough managers, managers who can hold
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the space for their teams to rise up and solve problems.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I think most of the challenges that corporations and even
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: society space are so large they're not solved by individual people.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So this idea of the kind of mythic artist or
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the gallant, imaginative CEO are are really doing us a
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: disservice in terms of harnessing the collective intelligence of the team.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And are these the kinds of things that can you know,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: boost the size of a company, boost profits, boost jobs,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and help the economy in general. Well, I think that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: we're really talking about value. When I think of art,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I think about the creation of value. So there are
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: many different things that boost jobs and profits that are
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: not about the creation of value. They can be about,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: you know, making bad investments that don't get over your
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: hurdle rate, but that grow the size of your kind
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of net income. Or they can be about uh, you know,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: risk taking or extraction of value or short term profiting.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I think what we're really talking about are things that
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: create long term value across many different categories of what
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: value is. And I can imagine that that sounds naively
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: idealistic to someone who has been running a division of
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a company or a company for a long time, But
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I actually think that there's room in the portfolio of
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the managerial skill set for kind of willful impracticality and
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: idealism that if managers aren't making space for that, then
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: who is. There's room for that, but will they actually
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: make space for it. It's the question that's why there's
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a portfolio of view to this. This is why, and
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: I'm working on this now, but why we need to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: create r o I dashboards or return on asset dashboards
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: internally that include a wedge of the pie that serves
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: creative work and that can be measured in a number
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: of different ways. There's a company called to sixty one
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that embeds artists incorporations and they measure the output in
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: terms of reduced cycle time on R and D. So
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: there are lots of ways to quantify and measure, but
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: they're often process based measures or their value measures that
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: are not pure short term profit. I mean, this is
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: a this is a real challenge in the economy, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I think the reason I think it's important to name
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: is not just kind of idealistically to name it, but
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to say, you know, these are the questions we need
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to answer. These may not be the questions we have
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: perfect data for, but they're the questions we actually need
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to grapple it now. In your book, you also bring
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: cinema into this. You talk about Dallas, Bias Club and
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Inside Out, two movies which don't seem to have a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: lot in common. What's the lesson there? Well, I have
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to say it's a It's a book with a lot
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of different topics in it, and everyone who writes a
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: book should have the privilege of having their book translated
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: into Chinese by this lovely man and Yon fang. You will,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you will, You're about to tell us that you have
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: right I have. Well, it's the most humbling thing that's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: happened to me in many years. And editing a book
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is humbling for anyone who's telling you the truth. But
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: having your book translated by Jan Fayg, you're like, yeah,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: these are pretty disparate examples. I do need to do
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit across cultural explaining. So Dallas Buyer's Club
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and Inside Out come from really different parts of art
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: thinking framework. Dallas Buyer's Club encapsulates the idea of the producer,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and we know what movie producers are, but the idea
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of the producer is broader than that. And it's anyone
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: in a corporate environment who's taking on the secondary creative
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: work of commercializing an idea or making it economically viable.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: So you have this brainstorming moment you come up with
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: something amazing. The producers the person who actually brings it
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: into reality, and their job is incredibly resourceful, involves ingenuity
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: instant and these two instances. The producers of Dallas Buyer's
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Club had a roughly four million dollar budget. Matthew McConaughey,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the lead in the movie had lost thirty eight of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: forty pounds, getting ready to play an emaciated person ravage
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: by the HIV virus. They had to call him right
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: before they were set to shoot to say that their
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: funding had fallen through and that they have to postpone,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and in the most relatively angry moment I've heard of,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: he said, polately, you'll have to figure that out, kind
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of hung up the phone, and they did. And the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: way they figured it out is that they cut the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: entire lighting budget of the film, which saved them about
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a million dollars. If you watch that movie, it's naturally lit,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: which I think gives it a gritty authenticity that is
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: part of its effectiveness. The head and a code to me,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: I'll have to watch it again very quickly. Inside Out.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Inside Out is an example of Pixar's brain trust process
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: idea of radical candor and warmth of feedback. Uh The
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a director of the film, was three years into the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: development process, couldn't figure out the central question, was afraid
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: he'd lose his job, thought about how that would affect
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: his life, and made a huge pivot to be able
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: to move forward in what was really important about it.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So it's an example of being able to identify the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: question and the value system and the the warmth of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the interaction around creative work. Amy last question, is there
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a hope for corporate America without this kind of art
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: thinking that you've been that you've been talking about. I
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: would like to think that there's a hope for corporate
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: America no matter what, because corporate America is really a
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: collection of people who happen to work inside companies. Economics
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: is based on the theory of the firm, and I
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: think the firm is like a cow, and corporations are
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of people inside a cal costume trying
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: to behave like a cow. So I have tremendous faith
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: in people ultimately and in the capacity of people collectively
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to build the world that we are want to live in.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So we end on a hopeful note. Amy, thank you
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Benchmark will be back next week. Until then, you can
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: find us in so many places the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: dot Com, our Bloomberg app, as well as iTunes, pocket casts,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: and Stitcher. While you're there, take a minute rate and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: review the show so more listeners can find us and
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: do let us know what you've thought. You can follow
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Moss Underscore, Echo, Scott at at
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Scott Laman, and Amy at the Amy Wit That's Easy.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Benchmark is produced by Sarah Pattison. The head of Bloomberg
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Podcast is Alec McCay. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Four