Everything We Needed to Know about Business, We Learned Playing Music

Book excerpt: This is a compilation of interviews with thirty-two business leaders who played music as children and view that experience as a defining one in preparing them for success. The nine lessons learned, attributes developed, and insights gained are identified, discussed, and illustrated through the experience and personal accounts of the research participants. Recent clinical research into the benefits of music education focuses on higher math, science, and I.Q. scores as key metrics for justifying the funding of music programs. Yet, business professionals who have achieved even a reasonable level of career success generally attribute only fifteen to twenty-five percent of that success to technical aptitude. Rather than providing a compilation of scientific research and data to illustrate this point, the book illuminates the musical memories of these business leaders and the chronology of their journeys from the band room to the boardroom.