A Creative Collision

Everyone likes to talk about the entrepreneurial mindset and the mythical “innovator’s DNA,” but how do we actually get there? Having taught dozens of entrepreneurship courses between the two of us, we believe that the conversation around entrepreneurship is talking too much to the left brain and far too little to the creative right. We speak to people’s logic but not to their hearts.

This book is the product of our own creative collision between the worlds of music and business. The two of us were first drawn to each other by our mutual love of music and our common start-up backgrounds. We both started businesses in our 20s — including a virtual textile sampling company and online music booking platform — that succeeded in part by challenging orthodoxies in our respective industries. Then, while developing and teaching courses at Berklee’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (based in part on IDEO’s world-renowned design thinking principles), we began discussing the commonalities between the methods and mindsets of musicians and those of designers. What designers call prototyping, musicians call demoing, while iteration is a key aspect of innovation in both disciplines. The practice of observation, which musicians simply call listening, is integral to inspired application in both fields.

Two Beats Ahead is both an entrepreneurship guide for creatives and a creativity crash-course for entrepreneurs and business professionals. Whether you’re coming to this book as an artist or an executive – or a creative spirit of any stripe – we’ll hope you’ll find new inspiration and perspectives in these pages. As we go through this journey, challenge yourself to see how you can apply these creative headspaces onto whatever you do, whether it’s shaping your own career, starting an enterprise, or bringing greater creativity into your current role or team.