The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation Panos A. Panay, R. Michael Hendrix

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation Panos A. Panay, R. Michael Hendrix Discover what the musical mind has to teach us about innovation in this fascinating book, featuring interviews with Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, T Bone Burnett, Gloria Estefan, Imogen Heap, and many more. Musicians may just hold the keys to innovation in business. They don’t think like we do, and in the creative process, they don’t act like we do. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s most respected creators are also entrepreneurs. In Two Beats Ahead, Panos A. Panay, senior vice president for strategy at Berklee College of Music, and R. Michael Hendrix, global design director at IDEO, interview some of the nation’s top musicians and business leaders about how they approach innovation differently. They speak with hit maker Desmond Child about the importance of demoing and with industry legend Jimmy Iovine about listening and knowing your audience. Readers will learn the secrets of collaboration from Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams, about “daring to suck” from Justin Timberlake, about the power of reinvention from Gloria Estefan, and the importance of experimentation from Imogen Heap and Radiohead. And they’ll learn the value of finding and producing talent with T Bone Burnett and Hank Shocklee, cofounder of Public Enemy. A window into these brilliant mindsets, this book equips any entrepreneur or innovative thinker with tools they can put into practice to thrive in an evolving world.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show dot com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. We certainly appreciate you guys. Oh, my God. he did another podcast all these years and over 700 podcasts he did another one who saw it coming but you can tell your friends neighbors relatives subscribe at itunes and all sorts of other places where you uh find where fine podcasts are distributed that's what you want to take and do go to to those different areas where they're distributed

and subscribe to the findthecrissfossshow.com podcast. Tell your friends to join. Anyway, guys, to see the video version of this, you're going to want to go to youtube.com forward slash chrissfoss. You can see it's the latest technology out there. You get the video that comes right across. Also, you can go to goodreads.com forward slash chrissfoss to see everything we're reading or reviewing over there and all the groups we have on facebook linkedin and what instagram anyway guys

we have again two amazing authors this is a double feature today it's twice the value normally you just have one author because usually one guy writes a book but this time they try they decided to make it twice as good so that just makes this show twice as better. Anyway, these two authors are pretty darn amazing. They wrote the book Two Beats Ahead, What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, Ponos Pene, and R. Michael Hendricks are with us on this show. And this episode is brought to you by our sponsor ifi-audio.com and their micro idst signature it's a top of the range desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will

supercharge your headphones it has two brown burr DAC chips in it and will decode high-res audio and mqa files we're using in the studio right. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. And let's go right to their bios here.

Ponos Pene is the Senior Vice President for Global Strategy and Innovation at Berklee College of Music and the founder of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship. He is also the founder of Sonic Bids, a leading platform for bands to book gigs and market themselves online, as well as co-founder of the Open Music Initiative. He has spearheaded multidisciplinary collaborations between Berklee and MIT, the design firm IDEO, and Brown University. Panay has been named to Fast Company's Fast 50 list, Inc. Magazine's Inc. 500, and named as one of Boston Globe's Game Changers, among other awards and honors.

He's spoken about the future of the music industry on programs such as CNBC's Squawk Box, at events such as World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, and has delivered keynote addresses at events and universities around the world. Our Michael Hendricks is a partner and global design director and design innovation consultancy, IDEO. He has worked on everything from home goods to homeowner security. His illustrious 25-plus year career has made him a sought-after speaker. He has delivered design keynotes at Fast Company, Wired, Music and a regular guest lecturer for professional societies and universities across the globe.

Welcome to the show. Gentlemen, how are you? We're great, man. That's a great intro. Yeah. Is the show over now? I think the bios were so long and we ran out of time and now we just have to go. Thanks.

Buy the book. Bye. See you guys. Thanks. Good night. So welcome to the show, guys. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the internet yeah you all should head over to the book website which is twobeatsahead.com that's the best way to connect with us or you can also check us both out on linkedin i am Panos A. Panay. And I'm Michael. I'm R. Michael Hendricks. There you guys go. So what motivated you want to write this book?

Man, we thought there was just too much talk going on about those little subjects of math and science and tech, but not enough conversation about the value of creativity in today's world. In all seriousness, I think that there's been a massive transformation, clearly, over the last 25, 30 years on every level in society. And I think with good reason, there's been an emphasis on math, science, tech, engineering, as we talked about. But we think that given where we are, that we have to have an important conversation as a society about the value of creativity. So the book is less so about a

how-to manual. It's not a paint by the numbers and you get this. It's not a formula. It's more about presenting a framework and a different way of seeing things, a different way of problem solving. And frankly, we seek to pose as many questions as we try and offer some interesting hypotheses. But that was the motivation behind the book. Put the conversation about the value of creativity square in the middle of the dinner conversation. Michael, did you want to cover that too? Yeah, it's just, I think there's that big umbrella idea of unlocking a creative capacity of people, especially in a world that is always changing, hard to know where it's going. And then also personally, both Panis and I have been creative professionals our whole

lives. We've recognized the value of the mindsets we bring to that and felt like we could help other people unlock that for themselves. There you go. So give us an arcing overview of the book. What is the book about? And something to entice readers to want to pick that baby up. It's a subtitle of the book is what musical minds can teach us about creativity and innovation.

And so we have, because we teach a class at Berkeley, and because of where entrepreneurs have experienced these things ourselves, we thought it wouldn't be cool to write a book that focuses on musicians and helps explain how they use their artistry and all the mindsets they bring into their artistry to pursue other things in their lives, launching new businesses, creating new organizations, designing products. And by doing that, we can start to illustrate a framework of looking at the world that helps you as a reader approach the world in a new way see it in a new way like an artist like like a musician and so you can be the next pharrell or you can be the next beyonce not the singer on the stage can i wear the leotards and do the dancing

and stuff anytime you want i think this is the this is the era of ubu yeah but we believe that a lot of people are holding themselves back. They're self-editing. They're not giving themselves that permission to explore. And really, even as Pana said, the education system has beat it out of us. So what we're doing is reintroducing the value of creative mindsets into the conversation again. Chris, a lot of it is just informed, as Michael said, by our personal journey. So I founded and ran an online business for for 13 years and the truth is that for the longest of time even though the

company is in the music space i ran away from my background as a musician for my education as a musician because in many ways what the hell does one have to do with him with the other i i it's almost as if i had this uh imposter syndrome gee who who am i to to think that i'm this if i came from that or whatever but then after i sold the the the company and the president berkeley asked me to go to berkeley and found the institute for creative entrepreneurship which was all about helping young creators develop careers and think of themselves from a career perspective, I started thinking about my own journey. And I realized that the two, my entrepreneurial journey and my background as a musician, were actually very closely intertwined. As a matter of fact, they were inseparable.

And I just started thinking how, in many ways, we tend to teach business as if it's math and science, but business is all about creativity. The most successful businesses out there are products of creative minds and emotive minds. And I think it's a conversation that we're just not having. But a business person, their canvas is something very different than a musician or an artist, but it is a canvas. It is an act of imagination, of inspiration and creativity. There you go. Now you guys interview some interesting people in this book. Tell us about that. Well, it's nice to know a bunch of people. We have some, certainly the Berklee platform

is one of the fun things about working in a world-renowned institution like Berklee College of Music. We have interviews with Justin Timberlake, T-Bone Burnett, Jimmy Iovine, Pharrell Williams, songwriter Desmond Child, who's written just about every big Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, Kiss, you name it song.

And we have guitarist Steve Vai, Gloria Estefan, and Hank Shockley, the producer of Public Enemy. But we really just sat down with these folks. And frankly, we didn't think of them as interviews. We just saw them as coffee chats and talked to them about their own process, their own way of thinking and yeah i think in the book we'll leave it up to the reader to draw all the sort of similarities that that all these different people from all these different walks of life have with respect to the way that they approach creativity so do you talk about the how they write their music how they deliver it how they create content or how they distribute it or is it everything content or how they distribute it, or is it everything, everything and how they approach it? It's all of that. It's all of that. So for example,

Pharrell, we actually, most of the conversation Pharrell is all about the way he takes the songwriting mindset and applies it to other things. So whether that's working with Adidas or working with a furniture manufacturer, he's done a couple chair designs. He just launched a hotel last week in Miami. But what he really exhibits is this idea that there's a way he thinks about being creative that is really agnostic of the expression of it. It could be a song, but it can be a hotel. It can be shoes. It can be a chair, et cetera. And most of the people we talk to, they'll take us through their creative process but you quickly move into spaces and conversation that aren't necessarily about the virtuosity that you know them for like steve steve the whole conversation with steve is all about his own

prototyping process for creating his own guitar and then how that turned into a business for him and so we didn't i still don't actually know how he plays the guitar the way he plays. Is that the seventh string? Man, he probably plays a 14 string guitar whenever he feels like it. But the Jim guitar that he designed, it's like one of the best selling guitars

in the world for decades. And so we wanted to get into the mindset, how can you be a great guitarist, great songwriter? But also there was a genius you brought to making this product and putting it in the world. So tell us about that. So every conversation goes in that direction. It starts with the thing you know about them, but then it branches off into the mindsets, the creativity, the wisdom that these people have as they move into other spaces. Nice. wisdom that these people have as they move into other spaces nice and to build on michael's point

this is less so about the arcane mechanics of songwriting if you will but it's about a process and it's about the application of that process both within the context of music but then the transferability and applicability of it in other contexts, such as business. So when we're talking about Beyonce and collaboration, or when we're talking about Jimmy Iovine or T-Bone Burnett or Hank Schott about producing, when you look at what they're doing, for example, it's all about bringing the best out of the talent that is in the studio. It's not a very far leap from what a producer does to what a manager does or what a leader does. How do you create environment and conditions that really help

talent express themselves and achieve a high performance? So that is really what the book is about and how those interviews are organized. It's more about helping the reader understand the framework that these amazing creators are using and how it applies in other parts of life and business. So let me put you on the spot. What was your favorite interview above them all? No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You don't have to. So you talk about the title of the book is Two Beats Ahead. What musical minds teach us about innovation? Is the innovation core of this identifying their creative talents and stuff like that? Or do you take that in any other different direction? Ponus and I are both in the business of innovation. So what we mean by that is creating new to the world

things or businesses or, you know, schools and bonuses, open schools in new parts of the world. And so we are, we are interested in all these conversations with, with the artists and talking about how they create the conditions around them to do new things in the world. There's, that is ultimately really what entrepreneurs are doing. They're trying to create something from nothing. And it put an idea in a space where it didn't exist before. So that's the focus of the book. It's about that.

It's not about analysis. It's not about optimization. There's other kinds of important business things you need. We're certainly focused on creating the new. And the way the book is broken down is it's broken into nine mindsets. And they are, you could read them progressively. Number one is listening. And I'll unpack that for you in a second. Number two is collaborating. Number three is experimenting. But it goes on. But these ideas we try to do is help you understand how these mindsets in

particular help you move into the space of creating something new. So for listening, for example, it's about, to use a quote from Miles Davis in the book, we say, we want you to pay attention to the space between the notes. So music is really about putting noise together in a purposeful way. And the spaces in between actually make the music more meaningful. And you have to understand when you're approaching the world to look for those gaps in the world, for those empty spaces where nothing's been done yet. The example we give there is from Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Which, by the way, you asked which was one of our favorite interviews. Jimmy Iovine, I'm not going to say it was my favorite interview, but my favorite moment was an interview. We're talking to Jimmy Iovine. Oh. Excuse me, I got to take this phone call.

And it's actually Dr. Dre calling him. I mean, sorry, Dre, I'm talking about you right now. I'll call you back later. I'm talking to some more important guys. It was so good. We heard from Jimmy. He just took us through the thought process of starting Beats headphones. And it was very much this idea of seeing the space between the notes. So a lot of people would have looked at the situation at the time and seen, oh yeah, Apple's putting out the iPod. It comes with headphones. Everybody's got headphones. So that's taken care of. It's a commodity product. But they actually saw that the resurgence of headphones into the world as an opportunity. Because what they were looking at was, I mean, later called it medical equipment.

When you talk about the Apple earpods at the time, it was like, they just put out medical equipment. It was crap. It didn't sound like anything that we believed in in the studio. So they recognized that as a gap. And once they recognized this as a gap, they could say, okay, what do we want to put into that gap? And what they wanted to put into that gap was something that reproduced the sound of the studio so what artists want what they knew as producers but also something that had as was a fashion statement because i already picked up that even though these kids were wearing these

white headphones everywhere they had become some kind of fashion statement and it was a really boring fashion statement it's like wearing white socks. So they're like, we can make this cool by putting a fashionable product that actually represents the ethos of the artist. And that's where it started for them. And they went through. So it's a very practical example of understanding

from a musician's perspective, how they see the world, how they're making music and how they're applying that to a need, a desire in the world outside of music. There you go. There you go. Did you want to jump in here, Ponus? Just about every interview was fun because everybody's unique. Everybody has a different perspective.

I loved our discussion with Hank Shockley, T-Bone, because they're both geniuses in their own. perspective. I loved our discussion with Hank Shockley, T-Bone, because they're both geniuses in their own and I often say that you look at a music producer and if you ever just happen to walk into a studio and somebody tells you, yeah, that's a

producer, and you're like, what the hell do they do? They're not operating a console. They don't really play an instrument. They don't sing. They don't arrange. Most of them can't even necessarily even read music. Some of them are brilliant musicians. Some of them are not musicians. But their job is, as we said earlier, is about creating an environment, pruning and trimming, if you will, and really creating these conditions that make others flourish.

It's a selfless act. And you look at these people and you're like, yeah, if you're T-Bone, you produced Bob Dylan and you work with just about everybody. And you're like, okay, what the hell does anybody have to teach a guy like Dylan? You're not going to teach Bob Dylan how to be a better songwriter. Or you're not going to teach Bob Dylan how to be a better songwriter or you're not going to teach Bob Dylan how to sound not like Bob Dylan but their job is to really capture lightning in the bottle and for me it's just fascinating to see how they have these different approaches and T-Bone said to us I really don't care what somebody's playing. I care who that person is because that's how I reach them. And I think in business, we often make the mistake of saying, look, I need to go and hire a head of sales or I need to go and hire a CFO. But how often do we really bother to look behind the resume,

behind the LinkedIn profile, behind the headlines and really say, who is this human being, right? And what are they going to bring? And how am I going to create an environment that brings the best out of whoever they are? So to me, that was some of the most fascinating conversations we had. And I'll say, I also just totally enjoyed my time and interview with Justin Timberlake, who was at Berkeley for a couple of days. And he's just the nicest, most down-to-earth guy and just full of amazing insights. And it's always fun when you meet people who are at the peak of their careers and they're world famous. And you realize we're all just a

bunch of human beings. We're all a bunch of people with our own strengths and insecurities. So yeah, it was real fun writing this book. Yeah, Justin Timberlake, man. He's so good at so many different things. So now in acting and just like everything, you look at someone with that kind of talent, you're just like, holy crap. So this is really cool.

You guys give insight to that sort of caliber and what their thinking is and everything else. What do you really hope people come away from the book or do you hope that they're inspired? Do you hope they learn how to maybe use that toolbox that they're finding in your book to maybe become successful in their own talent or their career what do you guys hope that readers come away with you know man for me i don't know uh it how many times you look at a room in your house and you always had to arrange a certain way and every day you walk into that room in your house and you always had to arrange a certain way.

And every day you walk into that room and you sit in the same chair and you look at the room in the exact same way. And you've done it for 15 years. And one day you're like, you know what? Maybe I'll just sit on the other side. And all of a sudden you're like, wow,

I never noticed this thing. It's the same room. It's, but I just never saw this angle before. So for me, this is what this book is thing. It's the same room, but I just never saw this angle before. So for me, this is what this book is about. It's can we get folks to shift their lens just a bit and maybe ask questions that before they weren't asking. Again, this is not a book that gives you 10 brilliant things you should do to change your life forever.

There's plenty of others on the bookshelves. This is a book that presents an alternate framework through which you tend to see what you, how you work, how you collaborate, how you pay attention to the environment around you. And certainly in a post-COVID era, how do you take those steps to change or reinvent or reimagine ultimately who you are in your relationship with whatever environment you're in, your family, your personal environment.

So that's our hope, that we give the reader that spark that just wasn't there before. I know my life's changed by reading books that sometimes they're like 300 pages long, and it's like the last three sentences of that book that you really struggled to get through that kind of gave you a brand new insight. And I'm hoping nobody struggles to get through this book because we think it's a pretty easy read, but that's the hope that we have.

There you go. Michael, your input? Yeah, I believe most people have at some point in their life believe they're creative. For some people, it might not be past the age of eight. For others,

they might still see themselves as creative, but they haven't been able to figure out how that applies to their job, for example. And so I'm hopeful that when people read this book, it encourages them to re-embrace that part of themselves and to not see it as a some kind of dualistic choice between I can be creative or I can be a professional or I can be creative or I can be an adult. But instead, they start to realize I can bring these parts of my life together, these mindsets together.

Just to really drive that home, I don't think I really understood the musical mindsets as applied to my own career as a designer until I was nearly 40 years old. Which means that for 40 years, I was keeping these things separate, even though I was doing both of them at the same time. I didn't recognize the connection. And I'm the person that's in a creative industry has been, but I know a lot of people that, that have, they've kept, I think about someone like my dad, actually, who sang in choirs his whole life, but was a mechanical engineer. And I don't think he really, I was talking to him about the book the other day, because it was really interesting. He was like, he asked me, he's like, oh, who is David Bowie?

I'm like, really? Who is David Bowie? No, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. Well, let's talk about David Jones. Yeah, he just kept these things separate his whole life. He didn't really see, he saw one was a hobby and one was a way to keep happy.

And there was this other thing, it's a job that he did. And so what I'm hoping we're doing is helping people bridge that, understand that these aren't separate mindsets. They're actually beneficial to bring together in your life. Being creative is like super important. And when I was a kid, I was more musically inclined in creativity, whether it was playing guitar and then as a CEO and running my company's creative, creativity was really important for a portion of your title of your book, innovation and being able to innovate and stuff. So this isn't just a book for music creatives, I would assume it's a book for whether you're a CEO or just anyone in your life that wants to

maybe use more creativity. Is that a good analogy? it's for educators for educators to to think about how to bring as punnett was saying earlier adding arts back into their into our education but you don't have to know the musical references and like i said my dad didn't know who david bowie is but he got the book and man like i think words like innovation and creativity, they're thrown about every day and they almost lose their meaning. My title at Berkeley is SVP of Global Strategy and Innovation. I think I've fought for the last three years to just remove that from my title just because I think it loses meaning to some degree. But if you really think about it, what makes us human? It's our ability to imagine and create and even when you look at sciences

like mathematics or physics or engineering or the word technology which is a greek word that literally means the deep study of all these are creative endeavors it's our attempt as humans to explain the world around us but there are if you think about the construct of mathematics, if you think about science and our attempt as human beings to explain the forces of the universe and the environment around us, it's creative. What I think happens to us is that through through years of a particular type of education and sort of the need to conform to certain identities pile on top of this creativity, all kinds of goo and gunk that it makes us forget.

Ultimately, that is a fundamental component of what we are. So for me, it's everybody's creative. We're born with that. Anybody who's observed a young child knows that we're all creative. So it's more about, it's not about making people think creative, it's about making people remember that we're all, at the end of the day, creative. And it's not a coincidence that some of the world's greatest human beings, like Leonardo da Vinci, were both scientists and artists.

Or even Albert Einstein was known for playing the violin just to help him think. Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Fed, was a saxophonist. Really? Yes, a pretty darn good one, actually. Somebody criticizes economic policies, but nobody can criticize a sax player. We think that there's something interrelated between the ability, let's say, to see what others don't, listen or hear what others don't. Not because it's not there for everybody, but because they are learning to pay attention in a particular way.

I think we're also trying to put the, there's a, I think the truth is people, individuals and companies fear creativity because it's, it can be unpredictable. It can be disruptive and messy. It can be inconvenient. It's often seen as inefficient. It takes time. And yet we do as organizations, we're always talking about innovation. So what we're trying to do is help. Let's start connecting these two dots together. You can't be innovative unless you brace the creative mind, the creative process. And in that, yeah, you have to start to create the conditions for the messiness to exist. It's not, but it's not about randomness.

There is, I think that's what we're trying to lay out in the book. It's not like people are just around smoking dope and waiting on their news to show up that's not how creativity works i think we really demystify that with all these artists is that there's actually some discipline to this there there are some conditions you can create in order to get the results you want and you just have to start to get familiar with what those are so you don't shut it down too early so you don't deny it yeah do you what do you guys think about this issue that they've you know had in recent years where a lot of these music departments are getting shut down they're getting cut funding in schools and stuff like that is it really important to have more of that in schools so people can develop both sides of their

brain to where they can have music and everything else? Or what are some other good ways that we should be trying to encourage both sides of this sort of creativity? Absolutely. Look, your brain is a muscle, right? And just like your body, where in order for it to be at its optimal peak, you have to keep changing things up, right? You have to do your weight training and your cardio, and you have to do your high-intensity interval training, and you also have to give it some rest and so forth. Your brain is the same

way. If you just force it to always think in one very specific way, which unfortunately we find a lot in schools and in business, than the other part atrophies. But to be truly generative and look, for our ability as humanity to basically within 18 months invent a vaccine for a brand new coronavirus and be able to distribute it and be able to give it to all these people, that takes a lot of ingenuity and yes, a lot of creativity. And our world today is complex. And we think that it requires the ability to think both ways. I like to talk about people who are trilingual.

They're equally versed in creativity, in technology, and in business. And depending on where you are, one of them may be a bit more weighted, if you will. But I think that there is no way today to be a professional and be able to get away without having a cursory understanding, if you will, of each of these disciplines. You can be a CEO if you're not creative. If you don't understand technology, you're going to get ran over. You can be a technologist, but if you're not creative and you don't understand business, the same thing will happen. You can be a creative person, but frankly, if you don't understand the technological forces around you, and if you don't understand how to go about creating value for yourself and others

well you're not going to be able to pursue this career so in many ways the creators we talk in the book we talk to in the book they're all trilingual they're all polyglots if you will they're multi-dimensional human beings i need to learn to be trilingual i need to work on that polyglot is a good polyglot it does it could be a cool band name the polyglot trilingualist it's like a prog rock band or a or uh some kind of french jazz ensemble i i i think it's a yes cover band. There you go. That sounds about right. Polly Glott? Think about it.

It sounds like someone shouldn't look up on the Urban Dictionary, but I'll take your word for it. Polly Glott is a different way of saying multilingual. Yeah. I kind of knew that, but I had to do the joke. I have an OnlyFans account called OnlyFans.com, Paul and Goliath. I was just thinking about the question about education too. I do think my kids now are all college age. They had music education in public school. There's things that are about the way it's taught that I think actually doesn't showcase the entire

musical mind that we have in the book. I do think there's value in not only teaching kids to appreciate an instrument, but there's also value to go back and ask what other skills does it develop? It develops pattern recognition. Music is very much about patterns and identifying patterns, understanding patterns. It helps with emotional management. It teaches you, one, how to self-manage your emotions. Music is very good. It's one of the best drugs, right? To either calm you down and get you excited. But it also teaches you how to express emotion. I can bring joy to you. I can bring sadness to you.

I can bring melancholy to you. And then when you get into lyrics, and I think this is true for all arts, it creates, it unlocks the ability for critical thought. This ability to reflect on the world around you, recognize what's happening in the world, comment on it in some way that connects you with other people, that opens their eyes. If music and art were taught in that way in elementary school, I think you actually have, when you have students that are going into the sciences or into math, they're actually better prepared to be more effective in those fields. Because you're not teaching them just to follow formulas. You're teaching them to think, to have a certain kind of perspective. And this is why literature has always been so promoted in the past in school, because it's not just about the stories that you're reading.

It's about the cultural critique in those stories. It's about understanding history in those stories. It's understanding it's moving into new spaces, inventing new ways to communicate. That's what all of that's about understanding history in those stories. It's understanding, it's moving into new spaces, inventing new ways to communicate. That's what all of that's about. But I think the literalism in education right now that actually pulls us away from all of those mindsets and the value of them is actually the challenge. I wouldn't say it's a shame that these programs are cut. Music, performing arts programs, visual arts programs, that is absolutely a problem. But I would say they also

haven't really been understood for their true effectiveness. If it's just thought of, I want to help a kid draw, I want to help a kid learn to play the piano, you're actually missing the point of what those education programs are about. Yeah, if you think about it, Chris, look, music teaches us how to listen, look, as Michael said, for patterns and make sense of them. It doesn't just teach us how to express emotion, but it also helps us understand how we evoke or elicit emotion from others. It helps us connect. It helps us figure out different ways of presenting ideas and create storylines, which for anybody who's ever been in a sales pitch, that's all you're doing. You're creating a storyline. A product launch is an emotive

experience for the companies that do it the best, right? There is magic and theater in, let's say, an Apple product launch that I bet you if your kid learned music, they'd get really good at that. Music helps us deal with failure because the first time that you learn any passage, the first time you pick up any instrument, the first thing you do is fail. Do you stop or do you just keep going? What about the discipline that you need? What about this concept of practicing something so much that it becomes so fluent and so part of your own anatomy that you no longer think about it? Now, you've given speeches, I've given speeches. The best speakers on the planet, they seem so natural only because they practice something so much, it just flows out of them. for us for me this is the value of teaching music is not that

every kid is going to become mozart or some virtuoso i really could not care less about that but what i do care is about all this meta learning that goes by learning music that is applicable applicable in so many ways and i would argue that as humans we would be so much better off if we developed our empathy skills which is something that music is shown to do over and over again there you go there you go this has been wonderful guys any last plugs or things you want to plug on the book to to entice people to take a pick it up? Well, the book is called Two Beats Ahead, What Musical Minds Teaches About Innovation. You can buy it from just about anywhere that books are sold. If you like your local bookstore, by all means, head over and support them.

We're fans of any outlet that sells literature and books. You can also go to our website, twobeatsahead.com. But more importantly, the book is a starter. It's not an end. It's about creating a conversation. So we want to hear from people. We're already getting amazing comments from educators and medical professionals

who are saying, this is how it made me think about what I'm doing. So this is for us the greatest gift, right? Ultimately, that's why we're putting this book out there. Yeah, I'll just add that I hate business books. Hate them. I don't know how many I've started. I don't think I've ever finished one.

So when we set out to write this book, we're like, we're not going to write a book like that. We're going to write a book that people actually enjoy and want to read. And so the book has a really conversational feel to it. It's actually fun to read. And the end of each chapter has a playlist that we've put in Spotify. So you read about all these people. You can actually learn who David Bowie is. You can go listen to him on Spotify. You have these playlists at the end of each chapter that give you a moment to reflect

upon the ideas in each. And I think it's great. It's a book that is actually filled with music. And I want you to enjoy it as you read it, not just plow through and then spout off three points on Monday morning. If nothing else, man, there's a nine cool playlists. So buy the book just to find it. Just to get the playlist,

man. You know, if you don't consider it, if you're one of those people who's over a certain age and you're like, ah, man, there's no good new music anymore. I really don't know what to listen to.

If nothing else, just go and buy the book. You'll discover a new way of thinking and you'll sound really cool at all the parties that you're going to be going to once you get vaccinated. Once you get vaccinated, yeah. I've been loving being vaccinated, man. It sure is nice. Oy vey. It's wonderful.

You get this surge of, wow, I can run free again kind of sort of thing. You still have to wear a mask, and there's that. So give us, you guys, this plug so people can find you on the interwebs. Once again, it is 2beatsahead.com. That is the website. Or you can find us both on LinkedIn. And I am Panos A. Panay. And my co-author is?

R. Michael Hendricks. There you go. There you go. And Michael, has anyone told you that you channel a little bit of young Walter Becker from, I'm not going to tell you who it's from. You better know who it's from. No, I do get comparisons though to different artists and actors. Yeah. That's cool. Walter Becker of Steely Dan.

I've been looking at your guitar and he plays the same similar sort of strata. Not exactly. Close. But yeah. So I think you'd have to change your glasses a little bit, make them darker and just kind of bring the beard in a little bit more. And you can cover it. And they need them covered now because it's now because it's just, it's just Donald Fagan left over. So you might have a future. Just stand in.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of Berkeley grads in Steely Dan. So is there really, that would make sense. Those guys, those guys were just intellectuals going out the thing. So it's been wonderful to have you both on.

Thank you both for coming on and spending some time with us today. Thanks, Alexis. There you go. Two beats ahead. What musical minds teach us about innovation? Check it out. It just came out on April 6, 2021. You can order the book at local bookstores or

wherever near you. You can see the video version of this at youtube.com. Also go to Goodreads. You can see all the books we're reviewing and reading over there. You can see the video version of this at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Also go to Goodreads forward slash Chris Voss. You can see all the books we're reviewing and reading over there. You can also go to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. There's a whole mess of groups over there you can take and get involved with. Thanks, my honors, for tuning in. Be sure to wear your mask, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.