Nike CEO, Mark Parker, is featured in Fast Company’s September edition cover story, “The World’s Most Creative CEO.” It chronicles Parker’s internal rise to Nike’s chief executive and his recipe for success by using “elite athletes, artists, and his own shoe designs to drive a $34 billion business.”

Parker is not a household name outside of Nike and the sports industry, compared to co-founder and chairman, Phil Knight. Knight was CEO for almost 40 years until he stepped down in 2004, when he brought in an outsider from S.C. Johnson, William Perez, to replace him. Perez lasted only 18 months before hanging up his cleats, saying that the culture at Nike was too difficult. That’s when Nike turned to Parker, a long-time Nike executive and über footwear designer.

Parker came to Nike in 1979 as a product designer and footwear tester. It wasn’t long before executives realized his talent in creating some of the most memorable and profitable Nike shoe products in the company’s history. His creations have adorned some of the globe’s most celebrated athletes, including John McEnroe, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and Kobe Bryant – a veritable “cobbler to the gods” as described by Fast Company.

An avid marathoner himself, Mark Parker knows a thing or two about athletes and footwear. Most important, he brings a creative mind to the CEO role, which he continues to nurture every day. According to the article, he “regularly hosts dinners for about 25 artist friends to just talk and kick around ideas.”

It’s no surprise that Parker stays laser-focused on Nike’s design and R&D work. He frequents the company’s secretive “Innovation Kitchen” sessions, an internal think tank of sorts, “where athletic ambition, art, and a bit of mad science are cooked into the stuff that made Nike the dominate player in sports shoes and apparel.”

Parker also spends a lot of time and attention on sustainability and cutting product waste. And, Parker recently outlined some pretty big goals of increasing sales by 40 percent by 2015. He’ll have his work cut out for him, but stretch goals and competing hard are nothing new for a company which aligns itself with world class athletes and sports.

If you want a little insight into what makes this successful corporate executive tick, take a look at his choice for the new company mission statement nine years ago: “To bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world.”

Since becoming CEO, Parker has also developed nine “maxims” that he wants to serve as guiding principles at Nike. His favorite is No. 6, “Be a sponge. Curiosity is life. Assumption is death.” Parker says that was one his grandmother taught him.

Parker’s approach demonstrates that curiosity and a hearty appetite for creativity are a powerful combo for Nike — and for any other company seeking to compete and win.

I’m in the process of building a house in McLean, Virginia, and have spent countless hours in the past six months trying to find a good stucco and plaster subcontractor.

We have a very capable architect and equally capable builder, but our struggle has been to find a stucco applicator who uses old-style lime-based stucco and technique similar to that used for centuries in areas like New Orleans, Savannah, Middleburg (Virginia), and throughout much of Europe. Ironically, I would’ve had no trouble rounding up such a subcontractor if I were building my house 75 years ago.

Today, the home building market puts a premium on cost, ease and quickness of application, and a seemingly perfect finish. Guaranteed not to crack for 10 years! But what will it look like in 15 years, in 25 years? Would it simply need a touch up, or a tear down?

Unfortunately, architects and home builders are merely responding to what customers are asking for — or frankly, not asking for.

So maybe I’m the odd woman out on this, but I prefer a look and finish that appears hand-crafted, not perfect. I long for a time when subcontractors were referred to as artisans, not applicators. Sure you will pay more initially, but the immeasurable pleasure derived from hand-applied fit and finish is worth it for the decades I plan on enjoying it.

Some of the finest Persian rug weavers in the world intentionally included a small imperfection in their handmade carpets. It’s as if to say, “yes, I am handmade, one-of-a-kind, and I wasn’t made on a factory assembly line.”

Call me old-fashion, but I think we could all learn something from the old Persian rug weaver’s mentality, whether it’s a house we build or a company we build.

Treat your employees as one-of-a-kind. Treat them as artisans. Cultivate their creativity and incent them to try new approaches. Celebrate their successes, and dwell less on their failures. Otherwise you serve to discourage the needed risk-taking that could make your company great.

In short, spend less time worrying about making it perfect, and more time on making it right and in a way that will last a lifetime.

The Corcoran College of Art + Design is Washington’s only four-year accredited institution for education in the arts.

Situated only a block away from The White House in its renowned turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts building, the Corcoran Gallery of Art has long been an integral part of our nation’s capital. When it was founded in 1869, the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, occupied the White House.

When the Gallery first opened its doors in 1874, “art students immediately flocked to the museum to observe, sketch, and paint copies of the collections famous works,” according to the Corcoran’s website.

The Gallery’s founder, William Wilson Corcoran, made sure that art education was central to the work of Gallery and donated additional funding that was ultimately used to open the Corcoran School of Art in 1890, two years after his death. The school has been known by its current name since 1999.

Today, more than 600 students at the Corcoran College of Art + Design pursue a wide range of Associate, Bachelor, and Master degree programs in the visual arts. The College also offers part-time credit and non-credit classes for adults and teens through its Continuing Education department. I know this first-hand. I’ve taken several drawing classes at the Corcoran in the past, and am currently enrolled in a ceramic tile-making class.

My class meets once a week for a three-hour session on Wednesday nights. Sure, it makes for a long day, but it is worth it. I’m learning a new craft. I’m using new mental and creative muscles. And I’m getting a hands-on appreciation for the timeless art of tile-making, which has changed little over the last several hundred years.

Most important, with each tedious step of the tile-making process, I am re-affirming what I already knew: there are no short-cuts to success in the creative arts. You learn by doing and do by learning.

The same can be said for success in business. Executives and managers must constantly challenge their employees through creative training programs that excite new thinking. In turn, employees must be willing to use new muscles, and put them to work through practice and application.

Marrying business and education — like marrying art and education – will make for a beautiful relationship and lead to many happy returns.

Last week, Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein profiled career analyst and author Daniel Pink and his new book: “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

In the book, Pink makes the case that money can only motivate employees up to a point. In fact, he cites studies and real-life examples that support the notion that incentive bonuses actually result in less creative and innovative thinking.

Granted, Pink notes that good performance starts with employees who feel like they are fairly compensated. Beyond that, he contends that employees will in fact use higher levels of initiative, problem-solving, and creativity in response to traditional, non-monetary competitive forces.

In a speech at a TED conference at Oxford, England last summer, Pink previewed some of his thinking that went into “Drive.” He cited a 2005 study by MIT conducted for the Federal Reserve that found that “as long as the task involved mechanical skill, bonuses worked as would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.” However, “once the task called for an even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.”

Pink also wrote “A Whole New Mind” in 2006, which makes the case for more right-brain thinking (e.g., inventiveness and creativity), noting “the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right-brain qualities.” This is an interesting proposition (and a correct one in my opinion) considering it is coming from a trained left-brain-thinking lawyer.

Given today’s level of global competition and the fragile economy, companies would be well-advised to look differently at how they try to motivate employees. Based on my own experience in managing executive compensation programs at large multinational companies, companies are far too quick to assume that traditional carrots like higher bonuses and larger stock grants will result in higher levels of performance.

These compensation tools are important for retaining your most promising employees. Yet, when used alone, they may in fact be stunting – not inducing – higher levels of innovation, risk-taking, and problem-solving.

Companies that seek to promote a motivating corporate culture, a competitive work environment, and ample levels of recognition for excellence will ultimately be in the best position to elicit the innovation “drive” needed from employees to beat the competition.

Tonight, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will add five more names to its wall of legendary performing artists in the 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC. The 2009 honorees include: producer Mel Brooks; pianist and composer Dave Brubeck; opera singer Grace Bumbry; actor, director, and producer Robert De Niro; and singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen.

The honorees will join President Obama and the First Lady in the President’s box at the Kennedy Center tonight for the three-hour live tribute, which will later be aired in a two-hour show on CBS on December 29. Last night, the honorees and their families and friends, were feted at a State Department dinner, hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They will also attend a White House reception this evening prior to tonight’s show.

There are no shortage of annual award shows that pay tribute to the achievements of actors, directors, and musicians. Yet, the Kennedy Center Honors seems to stand apart. It seeks to honor a life-time of talent and accomplishment, not simply a snapshot of fame. The show also uniquely brings together on the red carpet the best that America has to offer from the arts and government.

I have attended six Kennedy Center Honors, and each was as distinctive as the inductees themselves and the remarkable stories told by the famous individuals who spoke on their behalf.

Former President John F. Kennedy said, “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

The highest levels of business achievement, like that of the arts, are attained based on a compilation of successful work over an extended period of time – not merely the results of one quarter or one year. And it is the companies that are the most creative, the most innovative, and the most willing to invest in their best performing employees, which will most likely succeed and endure.

Make it a point to honor those employees who help make your company successful with a little red carpet treatment of your own.

With its cover entitled, “Your Next Big Idea: Spotlight on Innovation,” the entire edition of December’s Harvard Business Review magazine is dedicated to business innovation. A number of the articles go right to the heart of New Lantern’s founding principle: employees, if properly motivated and stimulated, are a company’s single most important innovation source.

As HBR’s editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius puts it, “Genius CEOs can’t do all the work of innovation – and in truth, people and culture both matter a lot.”

In one of the lead articles, “The Innovator’s DNA,” authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen, highlight the five “discovery skills” that “separate true innovators from the rest of us.” These skills include: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Experimenting, and Networking.

The authors interviewed 25 innovative entrepreneurs, and surveyed over 3,000 executives and 500 individuals, who had started innovative companies or invented new products. They charted these individuals against the five discovery skills and found a high correlation among leading innovators.

For example, under the “Associating” skill, entrepreneur Frans Johansson cited the importance of the “Medici effect” when it comes to innovation. He was referring to the Medici family of Florence during the 15th through 17th centuries, who helped usher in a “creative explosion” by bringing together successful people from wide ranging disciplines such as: sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, painters, and architects.

According to the article, “as these individuals connected, new ideas blossomed at the intersections of their respective fields, thereby spawning the Renaissance, one of the most inventive eras in history.”

Likewise, many leading innovators seek to spend time around a network of thought leaders and individuals from a variety of different perspectives in an effort to “extend their own knowledge domains.” For example, they attend conferences such as TED, Davos, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, which brings together artists, entrepreneurs, academics, politicians, adventurers, scientists, and thinkers from all over the globe.

Kent Bowen, who founded the innovative ceramic composite company, CPS, cites this credo which he asks his employees to follow: “The insights required to solve many of our most challenging problems come from outside our industry and scientific field.”

Finally, the authors make the point – as we have made in numerous blog posts on this site – that whereas innovative thinking may seem innate to some, “it can also be developed and strengthened through practice.” They note that corporate executives should “put aside time for you and your team to actively cultivate more creative ideas.”

Let New Lantern design an innovation program for your company that would make the Medici family proud – and in doing so, put you in the best position to make your next big idea a reality.