Tag Archives: Diversity

The Rainbow Children – Prince, Diversity and Creativity

Posted on by Peter Cook - Speaker, Writer and Consultant

I just got sent this superb 28 minute film of Prince by Hollywood World Studio.  It is especially good at showcasing the diversity of Prince’s talent, exemplified by his album ‘The Rainbow Children”.  Oh damn, it got taken off my YouTube!

Some interesting observations about the original film:

  1. The film covers several quite distinct musical genres:  funk, soulful love songs, acoustic beatbox music plus Prince’s classic anthem Purple Rain.
  2. The band is a genuine meritocracy, irrespective of gender, race and so on e.g. women taking on less traditional roles of bass and sax.
  3. The show is meticulously rehearsed and this leaves room for a little bit of on the fly improvisation, mostly conducted by Prince himself, who gives signals to the rest of the band to extend passages, put solo segues in and so on.

How many artists could you say this about?

The potential downside of Prince’s desire to play so many different styles is that this may have lost him some of his audience along the way.  Some people prefer a repeat performance rather than something different?

Turning to business, feel free to make a contribution on the blog around these questions:

  • If you decide to change your product or service, how do you keep your customers whilst acquiring new ones?
  • How do you genuinely make diversity and meritocracy work to your advantage?
  • How do you combine structure / discipline / preparation with creativity / improvisation / spontaneity to keep the customer experience fresh?
  • What can we learn from Prince about resilience, excellence and becoming a learning company?

A book extract about Prince from my last book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ is available for FREE.  Simply e-mail me with Prince in the title (peter@humdyn.co.uk) for your copy.  I explore more of Prince’s personal qualities and the relationship with becoming an agile, ingenious and innovative company within the new book “The Music of Business“, acclaimed by Harvey Goldsmith.

Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll – contains a U-LOG-EYE to Prince