The Dream Cafe. Bruce Duncan

exist in businesses, they are often and unfortunately a dysfunctional bi-product of a lack of effective discourse between different spheres of expertise, and/or management. The most obvious and most typical example of the battle between the quest for efficiency and the need for innovation is demonstrated by businesses that invest in efficiency enablers like ‘Six Sigma’ – only to find their innovation outcomes declining.

      Bureaucracy has a tendency to prioritize processes that deliver predictable outcomes at the expense of ad hoc creativity. American multi-national conglomerate corporation 3M – a business that had built a reputation for innovation – saw a 9 percent fall in revenue from new products as a result of an efficiency (Six Sigma) strategy introduced in 2001. Although the drive for efficiency did achieve significant savings in manufacturing costs and other areas where people could be replaced by technology, it restricted the opportunity for unpredictable cross-cultural fertilization, which had flourished previously. The solution implemented in 2005 involved setting up teams, deliberately composed of people with different discipline expertise, who were given the freedom to operate outside of the Six Sigma regime. By 2010 innovation income was back up to 30 percent and rising.

      Pivotal Locations

      Art is frequently profiled as a solitary activity that emerges from a context of personal deprivation. Yet its history reveals another level of engagement focused on conviviality and discourse between different disciplines. The Black Cat in Montmartre was an iconic location that allowed artists and other creative dreamers to meet in an environment with which they could identify as a symbol of rebellion and otherness. The heady mix of food, drink and entertainment established The Black Cat as an engine of cultural revolution. It united different classes and interest groups in a place where they mixed freely and gained confidence in a world where rules matter less than ideas.

      Dream Cafés

      Picasso and others arrived in Paris too late to frequent The Black Cat, which closed in 1887. However, they sought out and founded their own equivalents. It is clear that food, drink and live entertainment facilitated and encouraged intellectual and artistic exchange. Development also played an important role in forming this culture of disruption. As Roger Shattuck confirms, in his illuminating history of the ‘banquet years’, creative practitioners and their patrons created their own banquets to deliberately foster opportunity for creative exchange and inspiration.

      Context

      Paris in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century became an important location for retail businesses focused on experience. As a result of the unprecedented explosion of entrepreneurial ambition, Paris became a world centre that attracted all types of cultural creatives. Revolutionary and iconic structures like the Arcades and the Eiffel Tower, together with the cabarets and cafés, helped to create an impression that Paris was the centre of the universe for fostering challenging and provocative ideas. The fact that many of the artists who became leading figures of the modern movement were attracted by this mythology, and then went on to actualize the myths, is an important factor in the creation of this self-fulfilling prophecy.

      Investment

      While many artists did indeed starve, Paris became a centre for the patronage and commoditization of culture that served to attract artists, audiences and investors. In many respects the modus operandi of the art investors who monetized the avant-garde is similar to the enlightened risk takers that grow disruptive businesses by aligning investment with ideas on the basis of instinct rather than precedent.

      Style

      Paris took the lead as a location for style and fashion in particular during this period. Along with the creation of the haute couture business of high-end fashion houses, Paris became a centre for the Dandy; and the Flaneur, bohemian style allowed artists and their followers to dress the part and gain recognition and sense of significance. This was a lesson that David Ogilvy, the Englishman who had a huge impact on the development of American advertising during the 1950s and 1960s, clearly absorbed. Many regard Ogilvy as the creator of the style and strategy of modern advertising; and he freely acknowledged that he used his penchant for distinctive sartorial style (including wearing kilts in Madison Avenue) as a means of drawing attention to his agency: ‘if you can't advertise yourself, what hope do you have of advertising anything else?'

      Paris became a blueprint for later cultural revolutions in which style and content played respective roles in reinforcing a sense of intentional and confident difference.

      Critical Engagement

      Paris attracted almost as many theorists and critics as it did creators, which helped develop a context for promoting, debating and evolving ideas. The twenty-first century seems to be full of theorists and critics who use others' creative endeavours as a platform for assuming ownership of art instead of working in the spirit of co-creation to evolve a constructive synergy between practice and theory.

      Unquestioning obedience to tradition is the only thing keeping you from a more remarkable future. Considering the context that produced this work – and the mind-sets of the artists that created it – offers a useful introduction to the origins, characteristics and implications of disruption. The first phase of the avant-garde involved significant levels of daring innovation. However, the environment of conventional wisdom, risk-averse control and formulaic solutions that informed it is alive and well to this day. Responses to this context of constant change became a recurring source of the avant-garde's work. It is what enabled them to develop metaphors and new conceptual opportunities, which encouraged a reframing of the ways that we understood our relationship with the world.

      It would be impossible to replicate the particular set of circumstances and personalities that enabled the radical challenges to the dominant canons of culture and aesthetics that defined the avant-garde. However, it is possible to emulate some of the characteristics of what constitutes a creative context and a disruptive practitioner.

      B

      BELLIGERENCE

      Belligerence – whether through critical reactions to aggressive warmongering, hostile takeovers or bullying and ignorant responses to others – has fittingly earned a bad reputation. In the business context of culture building, belligerence ranks quite high on the HR list of ‘don'ts’ – and usually, rightfully so. But there is also a tendency to confuse belligerent behaviour with bullying. This can prompt companies to discourage or ‘weed out’ employees with qualities like individualism and passion, simply because they don't fit the ‘preferred behaviour’ for team members.

      As Niccolo Machiavelli recognized, ‘there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things’ (The Prince, 1532). As an arch strategist, Machiavelli often advocated patient diplomacy; however, he also understood that belligerent tenacity is sometimes the only way to deal with the aggressive denial that people tend to direct against the untried and untested. As he explained it:

      whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.

(Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532)

      Machiavelli's understanding that any level of change ambition needs to anticipate and negotiate access with the gatekeepers, whose primary motive is to maintain the status quo, is a useful reminder that innovation has not become any easier 500 or so years later.

      The expression of personal angst at a slow or ‘no’ decision can cause us to dismiss an individual's passionate commitment to winning as aggressive hostility. But belligerence is part of what makes great artists and great brands succeed. Picasso acquired a reputation for being unreasonable when he railed against realism, but his courage to persist and ignore the naysayers of the world allowed him to create a unique brand.

      In our current climate of political correctness overkill, ‘telling it how it is’ is often characterized as offensive, or at the very least insensitive. But a lack of robust critical response can lead to a culture of mediocrity. Hanging in there when the chips