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  • Published: 2 July 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241410929
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $32.99

Two Beats Ahead

What Great Musical Minds Teach Us About Creativity and Innovation




Fascinating look at creativity and innovation, featuring interviews with musicians like Justin Timberlake, Bjork and Jimmy Iovine

Musicians are masters of innovation. Demystifying their process for the first time, Two Beats Ahead reveals what we can learn from today's top musical minds. Drawing from interviews with masterminds like Pharrell Williams, Jimmy Iovine, Imogen Heap and Justin Timberlake as well as leaders from Amazon, Google X and Facebook, and featuring case studies on Lady Gaga, Dr Dre and Beyonce, this book identifies the key lessons and skills musicians can teach us about innovation and creativity.

Readers will learn how to listen more carefully and thoughtfully, experiment more freely, demo and prototype like a jazz musician, innovate like rap-artists, and perform and improvise like a great bebop ensemble. Two Beats Ahead is a creativity crash-course for anyone who wants to be more entrepreneurial or lead an innovative team.

  • Published: 2 July 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241410929
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $32.99

Praise for Two Beats Ahead

At its heart, this is a book about the creative journey. While the main ingredient is music, it is spiced with entrepreneurship, leadership and design and served through engaging stories. The result is one that will be of great inspiration to anyone looking to expand the reach of their creativity

Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO and author of Change By Design

All successful musicians are entrepreneurs and all great business leaders are artists. In Two Beats Ahead Panos and Hendrix prove it. This is a must read if you want to enjoy finding the path of least resistance to the dream you are chasing!

Kevin O'Leary Shark Tank Investor, Chairman O'Shares ETFs

What a treat to get an inside look at the creative process and enterprising spirit of some of the most talented people on the planet

Scott Dadich, creator of Abstract, recipient of the National Design Award, former editor in chief of WIRED

For a long time researchers have known that musical intelligence can awaken the nonlinear whole mind to healing, creativity and innovation. This book is a roadmap for innovators, entrepreneurs and those seeking new avenues for exploring and reimagining the future evolution of human consciousness and its infinite possibilities

Deepak Chopra

How we perceive the world is the key to how we act in the world. Based on their course at Berklee, Michael and Panos show that a musician's perspective, much like a designers perspective, can unlock inspiration and innovation, no matter who you are

David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school

Two Beats Ahead is the first of its kind - a book that turns on its ear the popular myth that business and the arts are at odds with each other. There is so much we can learn from musicians about innovation and creativity in business, and in this groundbreaking and riveting book, Panos Panay and Michael Hendrix show us exactly what we're missing

Amy Cuddy, social psychologist and bestselling author of Presence

This book is not just about innovation. It may be the most provocative and thoughtful business book of its time, an approach to managing through the cacophony of fifty years of disruption

Jim Champy, Business Consultant and Co-Author of Reengineering the Corporation

Being an artist isn't just a matter of having imaginative ideas-to make songs and put them out into the world, you have to use that imagination to problem-solve, collaborate, pivot, and hustle. This book shows how thinking like a musician can provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs, educators, and anyone who's trying to create something new

Hrishikesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder

We all know that creativity plays a major role in the world of music, and that innovation plays a major role in the world of business. But, are creativity and innovation two sides of a coin? Like the subjects it writes about, Two Beats Ahead is a highly creative, innovative and enjoyable book

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, former Chairman, Board of Governors, IBM Academy of Technology; Research Affiliate, MIT Sloan School of Management