Artful Making offers the first proven, research-based framework for engineering ingenuity and innovation. This book is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Harvard Business School professor Robert Austin and leading theatre director and playwright Lee Devin. Together, they demonstrate striking structural similarities between theatre artistry and production and today's business projects--and show how collaborative artists have mastered the art of delivering innovation "on cue," on immovable deadlines and budgets. These methods are neither mysterious nor flaky: they are rigorous, precise, and--with this book's help--absolutely learnable and reproducible. They rely on cheap and rapid iteration rather than on intensive up-front planning, and with the help of today's enabling technologies, they can be applied in virtually any environment with knowledge-based outputs. Moreover, they provide an overarching framework for leveraging the full benefits of today's leading techniques for promoting flexibility and innovation, from agile development to real options.

Table of Contents:
Foreword. Introduction. 1. What's Really Different About Knowledge Work. Artful and Industrial Making in Action. Realizing the Importance of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems. Rolling Out Web Technology at Ford Motor Company. Comparing Sun and Ford. Streetcar at the People's Light and Theatre Company. Comparing Sun and People's Light. The Four Qualities of Artful Making (An Artful Framework). Understanding Artful Making. 2. Artful Making Relies on Emergence. The People's Light Way of Working. Not Quite Experiment, Not Quite Discovery. Exploration and Efficiency. Emergence in Business. 3. Artful Making is Iterative, Not Sequential. Auto Making: Mostly Industrial. Software Making at Trilogy: Mostly Artful. The Iterative Structure of Play Production. The Script Is Not the Play, Nor Is It a Specification. The Writer's View of the Script. Rehearsal Process. Agile Software Development. Artful Making in Software Development and Theatre. Iteration as a Structure for Rigorous Work. 4. The Prerequisite Conditions for Artful Making. Artful Making Isn't Always the Best Approach. Reconfiguration Costs. Exploration Costs. The General Applicability of Artful Making. The Role of Enabling Technologies in Reducing the Cost of Iteration. Reducing Reconfiguration Costs: Software Development. Reducing Exploration Costs: Simulation, Prototyping, and Version Control. When Artful and Industrial Making Are Combined. How Competitive Forces Drive Work Toward Artfulness. A Common Problem: Imposing Industrial Costs on Potentially Artful Processes. The Historical Evolution of Artful Making Prerequisites. 5. Artful Making as Part of the Shift to a Knowledge Economy. Ancient Making. An Armory on the River Severn. The Costs and Benefits of Ancient Making. Toward Industrial Making. Industrial Making. Eli Whitney. Henry Ford. Frederick Winslow Taylor. The Evolution of Sequential Processes. Toward Artful Making. Artful Making. Learning to Make Artfully. 6. Artful Making Turns Industrial Notions of Control Upside Down. Managing People Who Are Smarter Than You Are. Supervision in an Industrial Context. Management in an Artful Context. Some New Realities of Management. Control in Artful Making. Physical Release. Mind Release and Focus. Sir Alec Guinness and the Challenge of Control by Release. The Director's/Manager's Artful Lever: Focusing the Group. Saving Apollo 13: Gene Kranz as Ensemble Director. The Director's/Manager's Source of Authority. The Precision of Control by Release. Control by Release. 7. Artful Making Reconceives; Industrial Making Replicates. Reconceiving Hamlet. Reconceiving to Recover Apollo 13. The Differences Between Reconceiving and Replicating. The Capabilities of Reconceiving and Replicating. Artful Making and the Customer. Never-Done, Constantly Improving Development. Reconceiving versus Compromising. Artful Collaboration. 8. Artful Making Requires a Secure Workspace. Securing the Workspace. Edmondson's “Psychological Safety” Concept. Security Beyond the Workspace. Creative Interchange. Working on Your “Edge”. Finding a Physical Edge. Learning to Work on Your Edge. Ego versus Vanity: Giving up Sovereignty over Your Work. Making an Ensemble. Two Kinds of Reality. A Whole Greater than the Sum of its Parts. 9. Artful Making Embraces Uncertainty Instead of Protecting Against It. McDonald's French Fries, Various Cattle, and Urgent Customer Orders. Artful Making Doesn't Protect Against Uncertainty. Improvisation. Building Improvisational Capability: Being in “Present Time”. Improvisation and Control. Artful Making and Interdependency. The Emergent Final Purpose. 10. Artful Making is Fiscally Responsible. Deadlines and Reliable Innovation. Funding Emergent Projects: A Venture-Based Approach. Staging Incentive Alignment and Risk Sharing. “People, People, People”. Fiscal Responsibility in Artful Making. 11. Artful Management. Managing Convergence and Emergence. Essential Themes. Artful Management Signposts. The Artful Making Qualities. The Four Qualities. Release. Collaboration. Ensemble. Play. Relationships Among Qualities. A Director on Management. 12. A Final Word. A Last Look at the Theatre. Bibliography. Acknowledgements. Index.