Next Page's Jazz Philosophy of Business

One of the first things I decided when I started Next Page, was that we should work like musi­cians – jazz musi­cians, specifically.

Thelonious Monk

Musicians don’t com­pete – at least not in the busi­ness sense of the word. They may be up against eachother at the ticket booth and in the iTunes store, but that’s not where the magic hap­pens. Good musi­cians feed off eachother, rather than on eachother.

For example, other musi­cians wouldn’t have been better off wit­hout the «com­pe­tition» from Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. They’d be infi­nitely worse off. By devel­o­ping new styles of music, reaching new audiences, and inspi­ring and ment­oring gene­ra­tions of musi­cians, Parker and Davis baked a much bigger pie, for eve­ryone to enjoy.

Musicians col­la­bo­rate – and jazz musi­cians seem to col­la­bo­rate more freely than anyone. They get together and inspire each other, teach and learn from each other, chal­lenge each other, spur each other on and build on each other’s successes.

Jazz pro­bably does this better than other genres because it relies so heavily on impro­vi­sa­tion – anyone can join in if they have somet­hing to con­tri­bute. And where there’s room to con­tri­bute and room to impro­vise, there’s room to soar as well.

I once saw a clip of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk that blew my mind. (I wish I could find it again.) At one point, Coltrane starts pou­ring his soul into solo and Monk gets up from behind the piano and starts dan­cing in a style that’s all his own.

As Coltrane keeps blowing – tur­ning a deep red at first, then increas­ingly purple as the min­utes go by – Monk keeps dan­cing. It’s clear that as long as Monk’s dan­cing, and not at his piano, Coltrane is playing wit­hout a safety net. There’s no soft lan­ding in sight, but that doesn’t seem to scare him. He just plays harder.

After what seems like an eter­nity, Monk mozies back to the piano, giving Coltrane a place to put his heavy load. The per­for­mance was as awe-​inspiring as any­thing Cirque du Soleil could come up with.

Imagine playing on a stage like that, along­side people who have the guts and skills to create somet­hing ama­zing when they could just as easily coast on rou­tine, and along­side people with the savvy and con­fi­dence to get out of the way and enjoy it when their own brand of genius is not needed.

That’s the stage Next Page should be.

Disclaimer: I don’t know nearly as much about jazz as I should. I have the impres­sion that jazz and its legacy is about the meeting of genero­sity and crea­ti­vity, but the real his­tory off jazz may not sup­port that interpretation.