Dawna Jones talks to Peter Cook, a musician, scientist and business consultant who draws from his eclectic background to help companies to adopt an intelligent approach to innovation.
Peter Cook is a musician, scientist and business consultant (in no particular order) who draws from his eclectic background to assist companies in adopting an intelligent approach to innovation.
Dawna met with Peter in the bowels of the Royal Society of the Arts in London where they talked about:
- The role of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in driving innovation.
- How dissonance in music relates to cognitive dissonance in business; the high cost of cognitive dissonance.
- A different way to look at failure, including how Prince uses mistakes and the mistake Richard Branson made when moving into the US market competing against Cocoa-cola.
- Where organizational structure starts and how it is like eggs - boiled, fried or scrambled.
- Why constraints help and why too many KPI’s can block creativity.
- Why musician Jack White puts his guitar slightly out of reach.
Toward the end of the program a cocktail party over took the conversation so we felt compelled to join in. Since you couldn’t come along you’ll have the pleasure of listening to Peter play Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape live in a tribute to Bill Nelson of Bee-Bop Deluxe.
Peter Cook leads Human Dynamics and The Academy of Rock, a creativity and innovation consultancy. Author and contributor to eleven books, Peter’s work has been acclaimed by Tom Peters, Professor Charles Handy, Harvey Goldsmith and Adrian Furnham. He writes for Virgin.com and been awarded a prize for leadership by Sir Richard Branson.
His career includes bringing life saving drugs to the market, trouble shooting businesses and starting up factories around the world, and introducing long-term change to business units to increase their innovation and creativity. He also writes for business schools at the MBA level for blue chip companies world-wide.
Peter has an MBA, is a Chartered Chemist, and an accomplished rock, pop, and jazz musician who has performed alongside Bernie Torme, John Otway, Wilko Johnson and Patti Russo (Meatloaf and Queen).
To connect business to the arts Peter has interviewed people connected with Prince, Eric Clapton, Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple, Bob Marley, AC/DC, Meatloaf and the Who. Peter’s new book, Leading, Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise is available now.
Evolutionary Provocateur
