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Cubism as a case study
MBA students find inspiration in Spanish artists
by Randy Salzman
for Virginia Business
March 2007
With today’s rapid change, thinking outside the box isn’t so much the issue as managing continual box meltdown. Employers seek managers who innovate on the run, combining ideas and concepts from across the planet to create solutions and strategies.
Recognizing that young executives often get pigeon-holed as accountants or human resource managers, the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School urges MBA candidates to take “Global Business Experience” classes. The courses include one seemingly incongruous week in Barcelona, Spain, studying the art of Picasso, Dalí and Gaudí.
While the connection between art and flinty-eyed business strategy isn’t instantly apparent, the week in Barcelona begins developing “portfolio backgrounds” in business minds. “Students hopefully walk away with a sense of possibilities, an appreciation for the evolution of ideas,” says Jeanne Liedtka, a Darden professor. “Those things apply to business, or they should. That’s one of the intentions: to help students see that business is more than functionality and producing stuff.
“Careers in business can be about developing themselves but also about inventing futures, business strategies, that are powerful and enhance the lives of people — employees, customers, suppliers.”
At Sagrada Familia, the massive Catholic cathedral that architect Antoni Gaudí began building 120 years ago, students see how Gaudí invented tools to solve design problems. Likewise they learn how Picasso addressed the emotions of his subjects, dissecting them into passion, anger, fear and joy. Dalí showed how unrelated objects can combine for unexpected results, as when melting clocks and a nude woman evolve into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
For second-year Darden student Jeff Sextone, it wasn’t difficult to apply this experience to his future in business. “These great artists did push beyond the boundaries of thinking in their time to be appreciated, so, my challenge to myself is to continue to not only push beyond the boundaries of common thinking but find creative ways to sell those ideas.
“Maybe a few more classes like this, along with some innate creative drive, will allow some to bring a ‘cubism’ or ‘surrealism’ to the business world.”
Other students found simple, concrete lessons in the works of Dalí and Picasso. “Creativity is based in mastery of the fundamentals.’ I saw this statement’s validity in every place and person,” says second-year student Reynolds Allen. “They had a complete understanding and fully mastered the basics before they were able to become breakthrough thinkers.”
Seeing the artists’ work in American museums doesn’t compare with an immersion in the culture that spawned their artistic innovation. “There’s no substitute for the real thing — the chance to take in a place where design is in every detail, from the shop windows to the design of the pavement stones and to appreciate extraordinary genius and the difference design can make in everyday life,” says Liedtka. “Barcelona isn’t just art, it’s about the intersection of people and place and time. These artists are individual stories of the development of breakthrough thinking, but they’re also stories of incredible turmoil and fertility.”
The students connect 20th century Spanish turmoil and civil war to modern innovation. “We do not need to involve phallic symbols in our mission statements, but we should not simply accept the basic design of our businesses,” Allen says with a laugh. “We should question at all times and challenge ourselves to look in different ways.”
Gaudí’s architecture, especially, illustrates how basic principles can be combined into new, insightful and inspiring ways. In one apartment project Gaudí created an exterior illustrating Saint George and the dragon, down to bones from dragon meals. “That perfection never comes on first try,” says Tayo Okusanya, a Nigerian student who graduated and now works at Microsoft. “Winning strategies require an iterative process of refinement. Winning strategies are not only functional, they also evoke an emotional response.”
The ability to motivate employees is the key to good organizational strategy, says Liedtka. “Good design inspires because it reaches out to us and makes a connection at the emotional as well as the cognitive level,” she says. “It engages and, at its best, it causes us to transcend everyday lives. The business manager, for a new strategy to be successful, must reach out to employees and bring them aboard emotionally.”
While some students don’t “get” the artistic appeal of Picasso’s cubism or Dalí’s surrealism, most say they connect with the artists’ clash with artistic, social and political constraints. “Dalí showed me that it’s okay to be a little crazy, if not necessary, to break free from the shackles of conventionalism and from being less than ordinary. However, in an organization, the leader needs to figure out how to take people along for that ride, that leap of faith,” says New Zealander Angela Huang.
“People seek a sense of purpose that compels them to follow the leader, and one way for the leader to empower is to tell a simple, yet compelling, strategic story of current reality, and why change must take place and what awaits at the end of the tunnel.”
Randy Salzman is a former journalism professor who researches issues concerning transportation and demand. He lives in Charlottesville.
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