𝗝𝗮𝘇𝘇 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗥𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴

In 1925, Louis Armstrong walked into Chicago's OKeh studio with a band that treated the recording booth like a laboratory. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Duke Ellington was rewriting the rules of big-band music by composing for the strengths and quirks of specific players rather than following a fixed score.

In those cramped rooms and late-night jam sessions, musicians learned to listen closely, build on each other's phrases, and take shared risks that turned potential chaos into a living, vibrant sound that audiences could feel.

Innovation didn't begin in Silicon Valley. It started in the smoky jazz clubs of the 1920s.

As America pulsed with postwar optimism and cultural experimentation, jazz musicians pioneered collaborative improvisation.

Jazz bands thrived not on rigid hierarchy but on listening, riffing, and building on each other's ideas in real time. This dynamic interplay—spontaneous yet disciplined—transformed chaos into creativity, shaping how founders and teams would innovate and solve problems a century later.

The spirit of jazz echoes through modern collaboration. From hackathons to brainstorming sessions, today's best teams play that same improvisational rhythm: everyone contributes, nothing is too wild to explore, and breakthroughs happen unexpectedly.

Even our digital tools (Slack, digital whiteboards, generative AI, etc.) mirror the jazz ethos of rapid exchange and fluid partnership. In essence, the Roaring Twenties never ended. They just moved online.

Tomorrow's innovators will rediscover what jazz already knew: pivotal progress depends less on structure and more on trust, curiosity, and the courage to play off-key.

Underneath it all, a clear vision and shared values act as the steady rhythm section, giving teams a common groove so their boldest riffs still add up to something coherent and new.

Breakthrough startups will value intuition as much as data. The most innovative companies will embrace an improvisational rhythm, riffing products and applications into live prototypes and quickly reading the audience's reaction.

This format, called Go Wide: A Life Less Curated, serves as an antidote to algorithms and echo chambers by revealing how major historical events impacted the world and might shape what comes next.

Do you agree with this prediction? Are there other topics we should explore? Let us know at info@webuildscalegrow.com.

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When Jazz Invented Brainstorming: Lessons from the Roaring Twenties image by skarletmotion

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