Process of Reduction

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From the course by Berklee College of Music

Creativity And Entrepreneurship

15 ratings

Berklee College of Music

Creativity And Entrepreneurship

15 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Music Business

Creativity & Entrepreneurship will help you tap into your inner creativity and learn how to leverage it for career development or business innovation. Presented by Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship founder Panos Panay, this course features interviews with world renown entrepreneurs, innovators, songwriters, producers, creative directors, educators, performers, visual artists and chefs as they discuss parallels between the creative and entrepreneurial journeys. The course approaches entrepreneurship as a creative process, a fundamental human instinct that we all possess and can unlock. Creativity & Entrepreneurship applies concepts from the creative and musical creation process, such as observing, prototyping, iterating and embracing failure, as a means of guiding you through the concept of thinking like a startup. You will develop the basic mindset, knowledge, and insights required to pursue an entrepreneurial career, whether as the steward of your own career or as the founder of a new business in any field. Creativity & Entrepreneurship is about the side of entrepreneurship you won’t learn at a business school but, instead, in the music studio. What you'll learn: How to approach your career or startup as if learning a musical instrument Why entrepreneurship, like creativity, is something we all possess How to apply “the musician mindset” as means to collaboration and creative problem solving Why songwriting is a perfect parallel to career and product development Why there’s more to entrepreneurship than business plans and spreadsheets much like there’s more to music than scales and lead sheets

From the lesson

Creation: Product Development

This week is all about falling in love with a problem, and NOT the solution. You'll work to identify a problem you'd like to solve and develop prototypes to solve that problem. We'll take a look at rapid prototyping as well as iterating on your prototype to develop the most effective and elegant solution possible.

Connecting with Your Intentions4:57

Process of Reduction5:30

Falling in Love with a Problem5:04

Prototyping4:08

Meet the Instructors

Panos Panay
Course Author
Berklee Online

[MUSIC]

The process of editing has a lot to do with the way that you decide what to

leave in and what to leave on the figurative cutting room floor.

As an entrepreneur, you have limited resources,

especially when you're starting out.

So understanding the essence of the problem that you're solving is

absolutely critical.

Do you have a process where you distill something this big into its very core

element?

>> Absolutely, I think that's the most incredible thing that you can do,

even within one piece or within your career.

You first learn about all the things you can do, then you learn

about what you can leave out to still say exactly what you're saying.

De Luz, a philosopher, writes on Francis Bacon's work, I love this,

he talks about a painting having everything in it to start with.

And then what you're doing when you're painting is you're actually eliminating or

covering things you don't want people to see.

So that the only thing left is the thing.

Painting or any art really, we think it's a this and a this and a this and a this.

It's just so many things, it's an additive thing.

But I think it's add, often we often associate with covering.

And I think that art's job is not to cover, but art's job is to reveal.

And I think an entrepreneur's job is the same thing.

A real entrepreneur is revealing something that we didn't know.

>> Every company,

every product, everything that's created is ultimately a story.

It's a dialogue between the creator and the consumer.

And as people, we know that the simpler the story, and

the more central we are to that intention and

that message that we're trying to communicate, the better it is understood.

>> Kanye West and Rihanna and Paul McCartney recently had a song called

FourFiveSeconds, and they just do four lines, and then they go to the chorus.

And then they do, I think maybe eight lines and they get back to the chorus.

But that first time that they get to the chorus, which is so soon after they

introduce the verse, puts the listener in the frame of mind of being,

of concision, of being concise, being a concise communicator.

And communicators that take too long to get to the point will bore the audience,

will often not introduce any new concepts that are helping the story.

>> There is power in simplicity.

It has this magical effect of cutting through all the noise, cutting through

all the distractions and really hitting its target right where it's intended to.

There is a very famous story of Steve Jobs where years after he left Apple,

somebody brought him an expanded Apple keyboard.

And he took a look at it, and there was all these function keys, F1, F2, F3.

So he looks at the person who gave him the keyboard and

says, when's the last time you used the F1 or F2 key?

And the guy says, I don't really remember.

And he says, that's exactly my point.

So he yanks his car keys and starts taking keys out and he says,

I'm changing the world one key at a time.

And this is illustrative of the fundamental philosophy that companies like

Apple have, which is that there's discipline in simplicity.

Great artists like Picasso are well known in terms of going through a particular

process where they reduce an animal, and there's a very classic example of

Picasso's The Bull, to its very essence, down to five or six or seven or ten lines.

And businesses and products, and

entrepreneurs ultimately have to go through this particular process

where they're reducing an idea to its fundamental essence and acting on that.

>> It goes back to nature, all right?

If you look at any entity, any person, any animal,

any plant, any anything, stuff comes to them.

Water has minerals in it, salt, and this and that.

That plant or animal absorbs what it needs and passes what it doesn't need.

I believe we have an incredibly high fidelity engine

that knows whether we need something or not.

Your job is to filter out what doesn't belong.

>> I'll always take away clutter.

An assiette is really three little dishes on one dish and

people can get lost in the numbers, right?

They can say, well, okay, yep, there was three things here.

These three things were good, collectively.

I'm the opposite.

If I could give someone one thing on a dish,

even if it's one piece of buffalo mozzarella cheese, right?

That one thing better be exceptional.

So for me, it's all about less clutter.

It's about less noise.

Don't give me the frills on the outside, right?

The chopped parsley and sprinkle it all around the plate, or

the sauces that people kind of splash around everywhere.

And say, yes, I'm artistic.

It's exactly the same in business, right?

So it's about minimal for a very certain reason, but it's gotta have impact.

>> At their best, the simplest products tend to give us the most satisfaction.

You have to be 100% sure that what you left in is what will fundamentally

be the most impactful thing for your customer and who you're trying to reach.

[MUSIC]

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