It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. We school our kids in this from the first soccer kick on.
Bestselling author and management guru Dov Seidman built a brand around his hit 2011 book How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything, on the business of creating more ethical corporate cultures, and uses the phrase “How Matters” in some of his company’s materials, notes the New York Times. The book’s premise is that it is no longer what you do that matters most and sets you apart from others, but how you do what you do.
In his foreword to How, President Bill Clinton said, in part:
“My friend Dov Seidman has dedicated his life’s work to studying how people conduct their business and their lives. As we settle into the twenty-first century with all of its unique challenges . . . it’s clear that people worldwide will rise or fall together. This new focus will require all of us to think about the how, and to find new ways to take action to solve the global issues that none of us can tackle alone.”
Chobani, America’s top yogurt maker, launched a brand campaign created by ad agency Droga5, with the bold tag “How Matters” and tweeted:
Then, reports Jonathan Mahler in the New York Times, Seidman sued Chobani and Droga5, and requested a court order to stop the campaign as an infringement on his trademark for the word how.
Forbes’ Phil Johnson wonders why “all parties are blinded to a valuable opportunity”:
“For full disclosure, I’ve met Dov Seidman and immensely admire his book How, for its business philosophy. I’ve also heard Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani, speak and was inspired by his passion, not to mention his yogurt. Not least of all, as the founder of an advertising agency, I’m in awe of Droga5, which has achieved megastar fame for its brilliant work for brands like UNICEF and Coke. So, why are these wildly successful people fighting?”
Why, indeed? Perhaps Dov Seidman, Chobani, and Droga5—creative minds all—can agree that how truly does matter in everything, from book publishing to consulting to yogurt, and the decision on how it ends will not be decided in court.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By Michelle Rafferty
I’d argue our Black Swan “fever” peaked at Jim Carey’s SNL performance, but we might see a resurgence this weekend at the Oscars. In anticipation I contacted Roland John Wiley, author of Tchaikovsky and Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, for his thoughts on his subject’s recent omnipresence. Turns out, Tchaikovsky hasn’t always been taken seriously in the academic community. Here, Wiley explains the trappings of music snobbery – and why Tchaikovsky’s popularity among the “muggles” is no reason to discount his brilliance. Oh, and, he dishes on the original Swan Lake ballerina. (Dra-ma!)
An even more recent take on Tchaikovsky - Jim Carrey dances "Black Swan" on Saturday Night Live (c) NBC
Me: How do members of the academic community (like yourself) feel about Tchaikovsky’s resonance in popular culture?
Wiley: I may be different from most ‘members of the academic community.’ Not only does Tchaikovsky’s music speak to me, I also find the conceptual and technical aspects of it operating at a very high level. He was a very fine composer, an assessment that my academic colleagues increasingly acknowledge. Were we to go back 40-50 years, especially in light of the fashion then for early music and the influence of German musicologists who emigrated to this country after World War II (without which our musicology would be much the poorer), we would find a distinctive aloofness about Tchaikovsky in academic circles, which I sensed myself as a graduate student.
Me: Is his popularity with the general public what makes him taken less seriously in academia (sort of the way an indie band loses credibility when it becomes popular)?
Wiley: In a word, yes. But this is changing with the flourishing of popular studies in academia, which are having the effect of implying that so-called serious music is elitist.
Me: And are we (the general public) misusing or misconceiving his work in any way? For example, is a film like Black Swan blasphemous to a true Tchaikovsky fan, like yourself? And what does the academy say?
Wiley: I sense no misconception in the public acceptance of Tchaikovsky, but the need for fairness in distinguishing a truthful aversion to his music from a purely snobbish one. The misconception is that it’s correct to persist in the latter. I don’t think academia as a corporate entity has an opinion about Black Swan. To me it seems, like any other artwork, the product of its creators’ fantasy, and as such owes nothing to the mundane truth.
Me: Black Swan is all about the behind the scenes rivalries. What about the original Swan Lake
