Now, it may not be obvious from the snapshot, but the two ‘cats’ in the picture revolutionised the Jazz scene (which was THE scene) in the 1950’s. The first large wave of Jewish émigrés to flee Nazi Germany arrived in the USA and, according to data from the US patent office, drove up invention rates by 33%. The primary areas of innovation were chemistry, physics and aeronautics. But despite their sapient, bookish, dress and demeanour, Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion did not patent a novel route for synthesising haloanthraquinones, or indeed anything remotely of technological significance. They did, though, change the face of music through their record label, Blue Note records. Their tale is a successful conflation of interests.

Simon Lunt23 September 2016leadership, talent, strategyComment

Make them practice: improving your return on talent development

In a recent conversation, an Executive VP of a global pharmaceutical company bemoaned the poor rate of return from one of her biggest investments, talent development. In the past two years she had sent three of her direct reports to an advanced executive development programme at a prestigious business school south-west of Paris, each placement costing £35,000 and requiring four weeks absence from work. Now, as someone who is a graduate of one of the school and has helped designed and present one of their programmes, it is naturally that I leap to the defence of the Faculty. And I do. Not because I believe they are faultless, but because I believe establishing the conditions and expectations for a high rate of return are the responsibility of the sponsoring line manager.

THE FRUITS OF RIOTOUS EXPERIMENTATION

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