When you are designing a project, it’s not common to have the picture of life clear in your mind You look for it out of hundreds of shots. It’s a test and try approach. Finally, when you got the right shot it seems by chance,  but it’s not.

Lesson 1: Keep on trying and testing and let your mind work to connect the dots at the right time.

#2 Look for the truth

Honestly! How many skilled photographers there are in this world? Hundred, millions… maybe more? So why do we consider only some of them capable of making art? The answer is “telling the truth”. The majority of them are travellers, and they talk about what they have encountered throughout the world. The rest of them are travellers as well but in a different way. Through visual research, they explore their unconscious. However in both cases a great photographer brings on pictures something truly impactful… No way to lie on that.

Lesson 2: Achieving excellent results mean being absolutely true to your feelings… that’s valid also in your business proposition and objectives. You cannot sell something you don’t trust in.

#3 Be interested in people

Think about an unforgettable portrait shot… or  about some people caught on the street shoot… you cannot work and create lonely, you need of people. Even if your artistic language is architecture or industrial photography you have to get the best, from people who really know about your subjects. You need to learn how to create connections with people, encourage them to leave veils apart, and most importantly, you need to build a network.

Lesson 3: Running a successful business means being interested in people, building connections with them and engage them in a collaborative and empathetic approach.

#4 Find a Mentor

After you’ve read hundreds of books about technique and shot for several hours, you can say you’ve finally come to understand how to use your camera properly. But if you want to be a photographer, you need (one or more) mentors. That’s close to the circle! The value of experience on the field, the opportunity to see people at work. It’s not only the funniest part of your learning process, but also necessary to bring up new questions that are critical to pull you out of the comfort zone.

Lesson 4: Find a mentor and turn yourself into a professional, right out of your comfort zone.

#5 Follow the need, even if it’s simple

The photography industry is a strange one! In this industry we don’t talk about technology, but about technologies. There is a merging of old and new techniques, such as film, digital, polaroid, and vintage lenses and cameras. But this wasn’t obvious some years ago, when a group of crazy engineers decided to commit to the “Impossible Project”, where the aim was to make polaroid film sustainable again. The common opinion was “who is interested in Polaroid during the Instagram era?” But they got the challenge and the business became profitable.

Lesson 5: Innovation in business does not necessarily have to lead to disruption to succeed. Probably your simple need is a common need enough to build profitability

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Music is interesting for its practical nature. Of course it is also based on intellectual abilities, but manual skills and physical dedication are more than significant. Despite all of that, the most talented musicians bring their notes to life mentally. To the extreme Beethoven used that attitude to overcome his deafness. But why? Like with music we listen to mentally, having more abstract perception help our mind to take rational solution.

Lesson: Take time to be far from your business operations and think rationally about the high level processes.

#2 Perfection and success are different concepts

Bob Marley was clearly an imperfect singer technically, and Janis Joplin’s voice was damaged by alcohol and smoke. Just a few examples of how imperfections make people unique. Perfection is not smooth, and it is not typical of human temperament. Likewise, it’s important to avoid approximations and to be confident and skilled in our work.

Lesson: Do things! Design, study, test… but try. Look for uniqueness instead of having perfection.

#3 Less resources do not mean less success

It is my passion to listen to music that has extreme tendencies. Then, fascinated about minimal electronic music, nude folk music, Robert Johnson guitar… and people able to create a whole sound ecosystem with less. I like whole orchestral sound too, but that’s another story. It’s not always a philosophical approach. Sometimes using less is a need which then becomes a strength. Like slaves singing in the eighteenth century, or the first Kraftwerk album.

Lesson: You need to start. The lack of resources is a problem, but it is not a block. Do the best with what you have.

#4 Live on your time

It is the sound reference that makes the difference between professional bands and amateur bands. A professional band wants to create its own path, starting with some models. Amateur bands copy artists they love. That’s extremely significant when you need to bring it to the common people. People love to be involved in authentic activities. If you offer them a copy, they turn to the original.

Do business, live on your time. Identify market needs and solve them. There has already been a solution to the problem of “I want to be the new CocaCola, or the new Netflix…”.

#5 The power of listening to

Igor Stavinsky said: “The music is…the coordination between man and time”. Nobody plays music with total perception freedom. A talented musician listens to his fellow musicians on the stage all the time. Otherwise he listens to single instruments or the rhythm. The more he listens to, the more he is coordinated and enhances his/her performance.

Lesson: In business, good listeners succeed while over-talkers fail.

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The journey of  Bauhaus movement was unique. It has been so revolutionary, disruptive and powerful in the history of the art that for contemporary people at time was impossible to understand the real value.  Probably one reason was that It was not only about art. In the first months of 1900, people was judging with art eye glasses, something that was a revolution for the whole society.

Think about Industrial design, architecture, democratization of beauty, interaction between technology and daily life, educational approach and multidisciplinary mindset… all those things were touched by the Bahuaus influence. And today its legacy is more important than we expect.

Why the Bahuaus origins are important?

It’s difficult to reshape was Groepius thinking in first months of 1919. When the Bahuaus project born.  What’s the aspirantions? The objectives? The economic implications… anyway we can surely note today the extraordinary openess of his approach.  We were seeing something related to the art with a deep idea of democratised access.. And that’s not common for that period.

The multidisciplinary and equal approach

Nearly 40 years later, Norbert Wiener pioneered a new systemic approach to a multidisciplinary mindset with “Cybernetics”. However, Bauhaus had previously introduced this concept in the field, particularly within an expanded art context. Truthfully, the idea of innovating through competence matching has been around since the Renaissance. Yet, it was the first time the concept of contamination was extended from “competences value” to “differences value”. Being open implied social, economic, and political inclusivity. This marked the inception of the first concrete (and unconscious) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) laboratory.

The power of influence with beauty

A new approach to the equality of competencies and social extractions needed a redesign of the concept of beauty. Traditionally, beauty was closely associated with the sublime, and art had to be exclusive and unique. However, Bauhaus reshaped beauty into something accessible to everyone.

Beauty was no longer just for contemplation, but stated to serve our daily life. All the objects we use could be enhanced through design, improving our lives and cultural awareness. Consider a typical contemporary product design department in a large corporation – the mindset appears quite similar, doesn’t it?

A new idea of disruption

What always fascinated me about Bauhaus was the concept of assembling things together. Its step-by-step approach to practical tasks, coupled with a comprehensive vision, exemplifies the mindset I seek in contemporary founders. I believe the innovation process as we know it today began with a shift from a “unique author creation” to a “multidisciplinary group that solves problems”. We can see a significant contribution from Bauhaus in this transformation.

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