You should have an artist on your startup team

NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote, "The first driver of shallowization is technology, the way it shrinks attention span, fills the day with tempting distractions...So I’m trying to take countermeasures. I flee to the arts."

There are many ways to define "art". Just ask your favorite generative AI program.

Here's one. Others use the term to describe the creative aspects of a given profession or endeavor, e.g. the art of the start or the art of medicine.

Maybe you should incorporate the redemptive tonic provided by the arts and include an artist on your start up team. Here are some reasons. They can:

1. Provide you with a different view of the world
2. Make you more empathic
3. Improve how you feel things
4. Add cognitive diversity to all those doers on your team
5. Lead painting, dance or sculpture classes during breaks instead of wasting time playing pickleball
6. Be a better observer
7. Tell your story by appealing to the heart and not the mind of your customers
8. Improve your communication skills
9. Express your vision
10. Get away from your digital devices for 30 minutes a day
11. Recruit and retain transgenerational talent
12. The MFA is the new MBA
13. Improve your decision-making skills
14. Make you a better phronesiology practitioner
15. Improve your judgement

How about an adult arts summer camp at the Arts Students League?

The inclusion of arts and humanities in medical curricula has been a standard part of the student’s learning experience since the 1990s. The arts are credited with nurturing the skills and attitudes necessary for meaningful human interaction and personal development. McMaster University’s “Art of Seeing” program demonstrated that an arts-based curriculum promoted empathic development (. The visual arts are a particular area of focus, as studying visual art not only has humanistic value but has also been shown to improve technical skills such as observation. Art-making (distinct from art observation) has been shown to foster humanistic and advocacy-orientated inclinations as well as promote learning in medical students.

When you think of MBA coursework, you think of core classes in marketing, finance, economics, operations, decision sciences, strategy, and so on. You don’t think of color theory, collaborative drawing, or watercolors. But at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, they do. Unlike traditional business schools that collect and present art, they make it.

In addition to core curriculum that encompasses fundamental business areas, for the past two years Kellogg has offered students an opportunity to participate in artist-led, hands-on workshops that focus on a variety of arts-themed topics. Topics have ranged from Japanese book binding to collaborative drawing, and origami to watercolor basics. These workshops are co-curricular and completely voluntary, so students do not receive credit for participation and carve out time from their already-busy schedules to participate.

The Steve Jobs calligraphy class tale has become part of the iconic lore of entrepreneurship.

The high touch to high tech to low trust battles to win the customer/patient hearts and minds are raging. Creatives and artists at the front lines can help your startup win not just the battles, but the war.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs