The Hindu Business Line : Poetry and business

WE have seen a lot of incongruous stuff associated with business: Equity, environment, social responsibility and even ethics! But poetry? We had, of course, long ago a banker, T. S. Eliot, who did stray into poetry writing, but only after giving up his vocation. Eliot's inventiveness and genius to see poetry in running brooks and so on were phenomenal, but even he never dared to link poems with business management. Well, we live to learn.

It would seem more things are wrought by poetry than an average business tycoon dreams of. And you have for it the word of none other than Mr John Barr, an investment banker for more than three decades, who started as a director of Morgan Stanley and is now blazing a new trail as a poet-cum-profit maker as the chairman of SG Barr Devlin, a unit of Societe Generale.

Mr Barr's credentials to make poetry work for business are very high indeed. His six volumes of poems have made him somewhat of an icon, so much so he has been elected President of Modern Poetry Association.

Let me make his expostulations on how business acquires leverage from poetry simple for you. What are the three main ingredients of a successfully run business? Simply put, they are: Taking risk, weathering uncertainties and making profit.

A poet's insightful, intuitive sensibilities are helpful on two different planes. In Mr Barr's own words: "....a life of poetry — as a reader or a writer — gives one an appreciation of the fullness and complexity of things...That sense of art expanding to the limits of the human experience makes for a better decision-maker in the business world, because it tends to offset the tendency to reduce every business question to a simple algorithm or a simple proposition that we can boil down and make a decision about."

Secondly, a poet, or any artist, must embrace risk to succeed. He instinctively realises that "if you don't look for risk and seek it out in the way you write your poetry... you're probably not going to produce anything of interest for the future and for your readers." Thus a poet's holistic vision and willingness to take risks makes for better business.

(Those interested may visit www.knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu in which his entire interview has been published.)

B. S. Raghavan

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