SCHMITTblog

Innovation in Curation

For decades, curating a show in a museum meant putting the works of art together and displaying them (for example, hanging the paintings on the wall with some consideration on where they should hang and perhaps putting some introductory note at the beginning of the show, written in “high brow” art-history lingo). There are still too many shows like that. But the really good ones today are quite different.

 

Like the brilliant show on Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600-1700 in the National Gallery in London, which I attended yesterday. The show is titled “The Sacred Made Real.” For innovation in curation starts with the name: “Spanish Painting …” is the subtitle; the “Sacred Made Real” is the main title, providing a theme for watching the show. The audio guide, rather “audio program,” is superbly done and really enriches the experience. It is easy to use, includes interviews with the curator and others; allows you to play music of the time, and so on. What else is on? Not only the usual lunchtime talks but also “The Making of a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture,” which reveals the technical process in creating such sculptures.

 

All of this is experiential and customer oriented. That’s why I ask my EMBA students in the Munich program to go to the museums there. As museums have adopted a customer orientation and are wiping off the old dust, managers can learn a few lessons from them about how to innovate in a business in which there had been little change for too long.

The Singapore Goverment Raps

From Singapore, with love. Check this out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksw2UqTyhhc

Whover  thought Singapore is  boring??!! This is a rap prepared by senior members of a media  group of the Singapore government!   In all its tackiness,  this is quite cool. A bit too long, but very funny. Maybe they are trying too hard, but they must be complimented for having the guts to do it.

Ahn loves Mahler

I met with the President of Sejong, my Korean publisher for “Big Think Strategy,” in Seoul over lunch at the Lotte Hotel. (They had also done “Experiential Marketing” before.) Although there is a language gap, it is quickly bridged with music. Like myself, Mr. Ahn loves Mahler! And he loves it that somebody asks in the strategy development chapter, “What Would Mahler Do?” So, soon we are in the middle of a discussion of the Third, the Fifth and other symphonies. A book like “Big Think Strategy” needs an audience with an open mind and a translator that loves Mahler.

SCHMITT Shanghai Trojan Horse completed

It’s finally done. The artists and craftsmen in Shanghai have completed the wooden horse that I commissioned to provide a physical manifestation for the content of my new book “Big Think Strategy.” Right on time; the global launch date for the book is December 6. And it looks fabulous (below is one of the first shots of the completed work). Now, the Schmitt Shanghai Trojan Horse can fulfill its mission to inspire company employees and stand as a monument to big thinkers everywhere.

What is art?

I went to the Documenta a couple of weeks ago, arguably the most important contemporary art show, taking place every five years in a mid-size, utmost boring city called Kassel, located right in the center of Germany. Many have commented how bad the show is, and I agree. 

This year’s curator played a silly trick: He argued that the Documenta should not only exhibit and concern itself with contemporary art, but with any art that seems relevant at that particular moment in time.  So, there’s lots of stuff from the 1950s and 1960s by quite unknown artists, and even a Persian carpet from centuries ago--the latter, I take it, being one of those trivial stabs against the Bush policy.  (No, I am not a Bush supporter, but I don’t like the trivialities of the German left cultural establishment and media.)  So, the curator played that trick to cover up that there’s no great contemporary art, or that he was too lazy to find it.

And he played another trick: He said “art is everything;” sure, he put it in a more sophisticated, post-modern jargon, but that was the essence.  Thus, a poppy field installation (made of 90% corn poppy and 10% opium poppy) right at the Friedrichsplatz, alluding to the drug trade and the “socio-political” issues involving farming.  Let’s take the argument a bit further: If “socio-politically” inspired gardening is art, then certainly all the designer brands and casual apparel fashion (complete with “socio-political” imagery) that young hipsters display on the streets of Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, and elsewhere around the globe count as well!  In fact, that’s where art is created, and not on the canvases, sculptures and installations in the revered halls of a mid-size, boring German city that calls upon a left-elitist curator every five years to stylize itself as the “center of art.”

My Summer Reading List

BusinessWeek called up to ask what I was planning to read on the beach this summer.  You can read their full article here: B-School Beach Reading: What are B-school professors and students planning to read during vacation or internships?

My picks...

"Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes" by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

The amazon description sounds fabulous: "It’s Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it’s like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in the end, a man is always a man), and much more."

A sense of (dialectical) humor is key in life.  And we all (including MBA students and business profs) need to free ourselves at times from the existential pain of our habitual existence.  Why not read about Plato, Kant and Halle Berry then?  Sounds like a great ligitimate distraction.

"An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore

I know he's coming out with a new book. But I haven't even read his 'big seller' yet.  Look, I am not a global warming activist or a granola (though I was born in Germany). I wear my hair long because it is style now, not as a political statement. Environmentalism, however, has become such a huge issue in the U.S. and this book is part of the movement. Thus, I consider it a must read for any informed citizen.

"Breaking Ground: An Immigrant's Journey from Poland to Ground Zero" by Daniel Libeskind

I love reading biographies written by people I've met.  Recently, I was on a panel on branding with Libeskind, the architect of the Freedom Tower, and I was amazed how an architect and marketing professor can think alike. I also love one of his latest buildings, a new wing of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.  So, I want to know more about the man behind it.

Bravo, Mr Gelb; Welcome, Mr Mortier!

The first season of the Metropolitan Opera under the new Gelb regime has come to a close.  By all counts (ticket sales, reach-out to new audiences, new ventures) it has been a great success. Mr Gelb is thinking big.  The MET is quickly shaking off its old dust and making itself relevant to new audiences through high-def live MET opera broadcasts in movie theaters worldwide, through internet radio, and through fresh new productions (the Egyptian Helena was great, despite being one Richard Strauss's lousiest operas; Euridice et Orpheus was a treasure). 

But what was that donkey doing on stage in the new Barber of Seville?  Alright, the production had still been planned by Gelb's predecessor -- but I hope that animal nonsense (a horse during the Aida triumph scene etc) will finally come to a close.  We are in 2007 after all. There's hope; Gelb is on record for saying that he won't stage Rigoletto as The Planet of the Apes (alluding to a Munich Opera production that was far more cutting-edge than the MET would ever dream of; but then again rich New Yorkers, rather than German tax payers, guarentee the Met's survival.)

If that animal tackiness won't go, I may more frequently go next door, to  New York City Opera where Gerard Mortier has just been appointed as director. Now, that is a bold move! I still remember Mortier's last stunt at the Salzburg Festival from a few years ago, where he turned the champagne scene of Die Fledermaus (The Bat) -- that light Austrian showpiece  by Johann Strauss II -- into a cocaine party.  The host was played by a New York performance artist who blared his arias rather than singing them. And some of the waltz scenes were replaced by Schoenberg music. Welcome to New York, Mr. Mortier.  Keep up the shock value!

Brandism and Architecture

Yesterday evening, upon flying back into New York, I took part in a panel on “Brandism and Architecture,” where the question of whether architects are brands was debated, among others.  One of my fellow panelists was Daniel Libeskind, one of the foremost architects of today.  During the exchange, I realized how 20th century architecture developed quite similarly to the way the marketing field did.  A monolithic ideology (Bauhaus in architecture, the Model T in marketing) gave way to plurality of style, with a focus on experience (see Mr Libeskind’s latest designs, such as the Royal Ontario Museum pictured below, or see the iPod, in business).  This evolution is great news for all of us, as consumers, city-dwellers, and citizens.  The only people that still snipe about it are the non-doers: architectural critics (“Doesn’t brand lead to a commercial homogenization of landscape?”) and academic marketers (“What’s the utility in superficial experiences?”).  We’ll let them have their Small Think.

Media Carnival and Salzburg

Last night, the new production of Mozart's Figaro premiered at the Salzburg Festival.  Lots of media hype before: "Netrebko. Figaro. Salzburg," as one ad crisply summarized the highlights.  I watched the show on German TV live. (I will be attending the actual performance only on Monday.)  The program was moderated by Harald Schmidt, the comedian.  He gave a preview of the content of each act and was really funny.  The production itself has its cool ideas and highlights (e.g. the drawing of relations with arrows on a screen above the stage in the Second Act finale was great). But some of the stuff was too distracting and too obvious  (e.g., the constant marking of Mozart/Da Ponte's moral messages by bringing in a second-Cherubino Eros figure with wings or by darkening the stage). In terms of singing/acting, I actually thought Netrebko was great.  (Real opera fans don't like to follow mass tastes -- therefore "actually"). Her acting when she gets discovered as "Cherubino" in the closet scene of Act 2 was excellent.  Cherubino was also good.  So, summary: okay -- but hey, they are up against a splendid tradition of Figaro at Salzburg, and today's Countesses, for example,  are no match to an Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.

Later today, I will be doing a talk for Henkel and then another one for Seven One Media at a media conference to be held at the Tonhalle and Robert-Schumann Hall here in Duesseldorf. I will begin the media conference talk with Schumann's "Carnival" (opus 9) because all media planning nowadays -- whether it is for Salzburg or for washing detergents -- is really about creating a media carnival.

Strike, Again

I am stopping in Munich for a day. For the second time in three months I have tickets for Maria Stuart, the Schiller play. For the second time I show up at the theater and they only have a limited performance because of strike. (See my prior blog). And the same union is threatening strikes of the public transportation system during the soccer Worldcup.

Why not? When the world visits Germany, let it be known that the world’s highest paid workforce with the lowest work hours is on strike!