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Boost Innovation in Your Work—by Thinking Like a Poet

Tucker Bryant speaks on a stage in front of an audience.

Tucker Bryant is a Stanford-educated poet and entrepreneur. He’s also a former employee of technology behemoth Google, where he used his creative perspective to be an innovator. 

At the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program’s 36th Quest for Excellence® Conference this spring, Bryant will share his unique insights about innovation for the benefit of work in any sector.

Following is an exchange I recently had with Bryant as I sought to learn more about his planned keynote presentation for the upcoming Baldrige conference.

Let’s start with the obvious: most people probably don’t think of a high-tech business like Google as being an ideal career fit for a poet. Would you please share what inspired your path to employment at Google?

You know, it's funny; it's easy to see work we traditionally view as "left-brained" and think of it as being totally unrelated to and unassisted by creative work. However, working in Silicon Valley while maintaining an art practice showed me how interconnected those two ways of thinking are. 

At Google, I was a product marketer, which meant I got to think about how to tell the story of Google's products in ways that would resonate with the company's users. That challenge engaged new parts of my brain, and it also called on me to tap into the same emotional velocity and economy of language that I reach for when writing poetry. I was drawn to the opportunity to marry those two lenses from which to see and speak about technology.

Your biographical information states that you “discovered the potential of the creative tools poets have relied on for millennia to drive innovative leadership in the corporate world.” 

First, would you please specify one or more of those “creative tools”? And would you please share how your perspective and practice as a poet enhanced your ability to drive innovation during your work at Google as a product marketing manager?

One of the tools I find myself considering most often is “thinking inside the box.” People often assume that poetry is this infinitely expansive art form that boils down to some head-in-the-clouds person playing with words and giving themselves no restrictions. But in reality, poets have to think inside the box to turn an idea into a poem that follows the conventions of a sonnet, or that has a coherent theme, or that just fits on a literal page. Such restrictions help poets focus and can lead them down paths of exploration they never would've otherwise followed. The same often applies to the restrictions we encounter in other kinds of work, if we give ourselves room to collaborate with them.

Those sorts of tools and perspective shifts made innovation at Google feel more attainable to me—alongside the broader ethos poets strive to follow whereby they explore new horizons of their craft not just because there is an urgent need to, but simply because they can. That sort of proactive exploration is the work that artists aim to uphold every day, and it is the work I aim to get professionals in other fields and industries to take on, as well. 

I understand that your keynote presentation at the Baldrige Program’s upcoming Quest for Excellence Conference will focus on innovation. Would you please highlight your objectives or key points you plan to make in the presentation? 

In my session, participants will learn how to adopt the perspective on their work that has allowed poets to keep their art form in evolution for thousands of years. This is the perspective that will help people 

  1. uncover hidden opportunities for innovation they might miss in their day-to-day routines,
  2. develop a more collaborative relationship with experimentation, and 
  3. find potential for meaningful breakthroughs by “interrogating” our weaknesses.

Do you have any suggested tips for leaders of organizations today—whether in the business, health care, nonprofit, or education sectors—to enhance their ability to innovate?

Absolutely! I can't wait to share many of these in the keynote presentation. One thing I'll advise given the extraordinary moment we're in is not to write off your loftiest ambitions: Give reality the benefit of the doubt. The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) means that we are at the precipice of a time in which technology will enable us to accomplish so much more than we could have ten years, five years, and even one year ago. 

Tucker Bryant 36th Quest Keynote circle blog photo
Tucker Bryant, Opening Keynote Speaker, 36th Baldrige Quest for Excellence® Conference

"The people best positioned to take advantage of this shift are those who are willing to entertain questions and ambitions that sound impractical or implausible simply because, recently, those ambitions were implausible.

Those with the audacity to question boldly and then follow their curiosity while exploring the growing landscape of new tools at their disposal will learn and fail and, ultimately, succeed in ways that skeptics will not."

 


Join us at the Quest for Excellence® 2025!

The Quest for Excellence Conference March 20 - April 2, 2025. New location: Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore, MD. Register today!

The Quest for Excellence® Conference

Sunday, March 30–Wednesday, April 2, 2025  |  #BaldrigeQuest

The conference will feature new and exciting opportunities to learn role-model best practices from nationally recognized thought leaders, Baldrige Award recipients, and representatives from other high-performing organizations. Conference highlights include engaging and thought-provoking keynote speakers, plenary sessions featuring the 2024 Baldrige Award Recipients, and concurrent sessions focusing on relevant topics of interest, such as leadership and social responsibility, operational continuity and resilience, workforce issues, and customers and strategy. 

Register Today! 
 


About the author

Christine Schaefer

Christine Schaefer is a longtime staff member of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP). Her work has focused on producing BPEP publications and communications. She also has been highly involved in the Baldrige Award process, Baldrige examiner training, and other offerings of the program.

She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar and a double major, receiving highest distinction for her thesis in the interdisciplinary Political & Social Thought Program. She also has a master's degree from Georgetown University, where her studies and thesis focused on social and public policy issues. 

When not working, she sits in traffic in one of the most congested regions of the country, receives consolation from her rescued beagles, writes poetry, practices hot yoga, and tries to cultivate a foundation for three kids to direct their own lifelong learning (and to PLEASE STOP YELLING at each other—after all, we'll never end wars if we can't even make peace at home!).

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