Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Harvard professor Robert D. Austin, and Carl Stormer in this case study examine how successful companies can “jump to the next S-curve” through an analogy to the life’s work of Miles Davis, especially his paradigm-shattering Kind of Blue album in 1959. Students consider how and why Davis, who had already proven he was tops in his field, created a new disruptive innovation in the field of jazz, in the process creating the most commercially successful jazz album of all time. The case also delves deeply into the creative process, and Davis’s creative leadership and ability to cultivate talent (such as that of saxophonist John Coltrane)-many of the great jazz musicians of the 20th century came out of the informal “Miles Davis University.”
Take aways for mangers and executives include:
- With Kind of Blue, Miles Davis radically detached from his comfortable but fairly safe career to craft a more interesting future.
- Simplicity was essential to the success of Kind of Blue. Simplicity empowered and freed Davis’s players to improvise and create without requiring them to put their technical mastery on show.
- As a manager of musicians, Davis sometimes provoked. Yet during his lifetime many benefited from their stint at “Miles University.”
Read HBS Working Knowledge interview here
Buy the 50th Anniversary Kind of Blue [COLLECTOR’S EDITION at Amazon
