Margaret Heffernan says the arts teach us how to think and work better, even in the business world which trivalises them.
I started my career as a producer for the BBC: producing dramas and documentaries first in radio, then in television. I had the good fortune to work with some of the finest writers and performers in Britain: Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent, Simon Callow, Bill Nighy, Nick Bicat, Simon Schama, Peter Barnes, Janet Suzman, Elizabeth Spriggs, the London Chamber Orchestra.
I went on to run four companies: one here in the U.K. and three software companies in the United States.
Back home near Bristol, I now write plays and non-fiction.
This trajectory regularly strikes people as peculiar. I'm frequently asked: am I a businesswoman or an artist? The implication is that I can be one or the other, not both. My interrogators routinely fail to see that there could be any connection between the different parts of my career.
But to me they're obviously connected. Because whether you're making TV shows or music videos or running software companies, you're doing fundamentally the same work: hiring the most creative people you can find - and trying to create the conditions in which they'll produce their best work... (Click here to read more)
I started my career as a producer for the BBC: producing dramas and documentaries first in radio, then in television. I had the good fortune to work with some of the finest writers and performers in Britain: Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent, Simon Callow, Bill Nighy, Nick Bicat, Simon Schama, Peter Barnes, Janet Suzman, Elizabeth Spriggs, the London Chamber Orchestra.
I went on to run four companies: one here in the U.K. and three software companies in the United States.
Back home near Bristol, I now write plays and non-fiction.
This trajectory regularly strikes people as peculiar. I'm frequently asked: am I a businesswoman or an artist? The implication is that I can be one or the other, not both. My interrogators routinely fail to see that there could be any connection between the different parts of my career.
But to me they're obviously connected. Because whether you're making TV shows or music videos or running software companies, you're doing fundamentally the same work: hiring the most creative people you can find - and trying to create the conditions in which they'll produce their best work... (Click here to read more)