On a softly lit stage, Sting is rehearsing a new arrangement of “Englishman in New York.”

The familiar chords remain, the melody recognisable, yet everything else is fluid. The drummer subtly shifts the groove into a reggae-infused rhythm, the keyboardist introduces harmonic flourishes, and Sting responds, weaving his performance around the evolving texture. The song takes on a new shape with every repetition — structured yet improvisational, disciplined yet inventive. Every member of the ensemble listens, adapts, and contributes, producing a live experience that is never the same twice.

Sting has been doing this for decades. For me personally, he grew up only a few miles from my childhood home, just outside of Newcastle upon Tyne. In his twenties he was a teacher at a nearby school, while I was a decade younger. As he rose to musical stardom, I followed his career through the mega moments of The Police, to his maturing as an incredible solo artist.

Today he tours with a world-class ensemble of jazz musicians, constantly reinterpreting his repertoire, and treating each concert as both a performance and an experiment. His genius lies in balancing a clearly defined structure with creative freedom: the melody, the chord progression, and the rhythm section form the strategic backbone, while improvisation creates new possibilities in real time.

This interplay of structure and improvisation, of direction and discovery, is exactly the mindset today’s businesses need.

In an era defined by rapid technological acceleration, unpredictable markets, and heightened competition, companies can no longer rely solely on long-term, linear planning.

Strategy cannot be a static document; it must be a living, evolving practice. It must combine short-term execution with long-term vision, exploitative optimisation with exploratory experimentation, discipline with creativity. This is what we call Strategic Jazz: a model for navigating uncertainty by embracing the dualities that drive innovation and resilience.

Jazz is often dismissed as a purely spontaneous art, but nothing could be further from the truth. Underneath the free-flowing solos lies a bedrock of structure. Every performance is grounded in a chord progression, a rhythmic pulse, and an agreed key. These constraints are not limitations — they are the canvas on which musicians improvise.

Musicians spend years mastering scales, rhythm, harmony, and ensemble interplay. That discipline allows them to diverge confidently from the expected path. They listen intently to one another, sense where the performance is going, and make decisions in real time — sometimes trading stability for risk, sometimes descending into gentle dissonance, always returning to a shared theme.

In today’s business world, companies and their leaders face a similarly paradoxical challenge. They need:

• a clear sense of direction, so that everyone is aligned

• but also the freedom to experiment and learn, because the future is uncertain

• to deliver in the short term, even as they invest for the long term

• to exploit current advantages, while exploring entirely new opportunities

• and to innovate rapidly, without losing cohesion

This is the essence of what I have called “Strategic Jazz” … a strategy model that holds structure and improvisation in creative tension, enabling organisations to remain coherent and ahead of the curve even when the tune keeps changing.

Business principles of “Strategic Jazz”

Before diving into concrete business examples, it helps to lay out the foundational principles that define Strategic Jazz. These principles are not abstract ideals — they are practical, actionable, and relevant in the most turbulent of environments.

• Purposeful Direction
  Every organisation needs a strong, long-term directional melody — a core mission, values, and strategic priorities. This is the backbone that gives meaning and coherence. Without it, improvisation becomes aimless.

• Exploratory Discovery
  Structure without exploration stifles innovation. Strategic Jazz encourages deliberate experimentation: rapid prototyping, micro‑bets, feedback loops, and iterative learning.

• Simultaneous Horizons
  Short-term execution and long-term transformation are not sequential; they must happen together. Profits and performance today fund the experiments of tomorrow.

• Dual Focus on Exploitation and Exploration
  Organisations must scale what already works (exploit) while also probing for new advantages (explore). Getting both wrong or over-weighting one leads to stagnation or chaos.

• Rhythmic Learning Cycles
  Just as jazz musicians listen and react in real time, companies should build regular feedback rhythms. These might be monthly, quarterly, or even faster, depending on domain and scale.

• Distributed, Collaborative Leadership
  Leadership in Strategic Jazz is like bandleading. It’s not about dictating every note: leaders set the framework, then create space for teams to improvise, experiment, and co‑create.

• Cultural Safety and Mastery
  The capacity to improvise comes from deep competence plus psychological safety. Teams must be skilled and well trained, but also confident to take risks, fail, and learn.

• Momentum Through Interplay
  Progress comes not just from individual brilliance, but from the interaction between structure and spontaneity. Direction supports discovery, and discovery sharpens direction. That interplay becomes a virtuous flywheel.

The best companies play jazz

Let’s examine how four very different companies — Spotify, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Revolut — are practising Strategic Jazz in real-world ways, and how their recent activity illustrates the power of this model.

Spotify: Innovation in Rhythm

Spotify is often cited as a pioneer of agile, team-based structure — but it is perhaps more accurate to describe its strategy as jazz-like. The company organises around squads, tribes, and chapters, loosely coupled teams that share a mission yet operate with high autonomy. These units are free to test, iterate, and pivot, but they remain aligned around a shared vision: deepening engagement, expanding content, and building creator ecosystems.

• Purposeful direction: Spotify’s mission to democratise audio, support creators, and personalise experiences gives the company its strategic spine.

• Exploratory discovery: Squads run experiments on recommendation algorithms, monetisation, and creator tools.

• Rhythmic cycles: Feedback from listeners, data on usage, and rapid iteration inform product decisions.

• Collaboration: Cross-functional teams improvise together, making strategic decisions on the fly.

• Momentum through interplay: Successful experiments (e.g., personalised mixes or video podcasts) reshape the core product direction — and scale.

Nvidia: The Architect of AI Infrastructure

Nvidia’s journey from a graphics chip company to the backbone of AI infrastructure is a striking example of Strategic Jazz at massive scale. The company’s long-standing competence in parallel processing and GPU technology provided the “score”: powerful compute engines that could be adapted. But Nvidia didn’t simply stick to gaming — it improvised its way into the future of AI.

• Purposeful direction: Nvidia’s long-term vision centres on accelerating computing to power intelligent systems.

• Exploratory discovery: It experiments with new architectures, cloud partnerships, and AI platforms (e.g., microservices, inference, simulation).

• Short and long horizons: While gaming remains, data‑centre growth funds R&D for next-gen AI and physical systems.

• Collaboration: Nvidia works closely with cloud providers, researchers, start-ups, and governments.

• Rhythmic learning: Regular architecture launches (e.g., Blackwell, Ultra), benchmarks, and customer feedback cycles guide development.

• Interplay momentum: As AI adoption grows, Nvidia scales both its infrastructure business and its platform offerings, reinforcing its strategic core.

Anthropic: Purpose-Driven Exploration

Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude model, operates with a singular purpose: building safe, aligned, and powerful AI. But its route to scale is far from rigid. The company actively experiments with model architectures, enterprise use cases, and responsible AI mechanisms, all while staying anchored in its mission.

• Purposeful direction: Anthropic’s commitment to safety, alignment, and accessible AI acts as its melodic core.

• Exploratory discovery: Through Claude, Claude Code, governance tools, and alignment research, the team experiments with the shape and safety of AI.

• Dual horizons: It pursues enterprise adoption now (run-rate revenue) while investing heavily in long-term infrastructure and responsible AI.

• Collaboration: Partnerships with cloud providers, major enterprises, and research institutions amplify its reach.

• Learning cycles: Frequent model releases, safety audits, and feedback loops feed back into strategy.

• Momentum: Capital, growth, and experimentation reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle — direction sharpens as discovery yields results.

Revolut: Fintech in Constant Improv

Revolut’s rise from a digital payments startup to a global financial app is a story of disciplined ambition and relentless innovation. While it has clear north stars — banking, global expansion, and super-app functionality — it adapts quickly, adding new services, experimenting with crypto, wealth, and deposit products, and redefining what a fintech challenger can be.

• Purposeful direction: Revolut’s mission to build a global, interconnected financial super-app gives its long-term strategy clarity.

• Exploratory discovery: It innovates in payments, wealth, crypto, and banking, pushing into new geographies and use cases.

• Short and long horizons: While scaling its core banking features, it experiments with crypto and other verticals to diversify.

• Collaboration: It partners with regulators, financial institutions, and technology platforms to test new models.

• Rhythmic cycles: Product teams iterate rapidly based on user feedback, regulatory shifts, and market demand.

• Interplay momentum: Profits from established services help fund innovation; innovations, in turn, attract more users, building scale.

Strategic lessons from playing jazz

From Sting’s stage to Spotify’s squads, Nvidia’s AI factories, Anthropic’s mission-driven build, and Revolut’s financial innovation, a pattern emerges. Organisations that thrive in uncertainty don’t just strategise — they improvise within a frame. Here are the core lessons of Strategic Jazz, distilled:

• Set a strong but flexible architectural backbone.
  Without a clear mission, values, and strategic priorities, improvisation risks becoming random noise. But with structure, teams can push the envelope without losing coherence.

• Balance execution and exploration.
  Delivering results today funds tomorrow’s experiments. Strategic Jazz encourages organisations to do both, not choose one.

• Create fast feedback loops.
  Frequent cycles of testing, learning, and adapting keep the strategy alive. These loops accelerate learning and prevent momentum from stagnating.

• Empower distributed leadership.
  Great ideas come from everywhere. Leaders must cultivate autonomy while maintaining alignment, allowing teams to improvise intelligently.

• Build a culture of mastery and safety.
  Improvisation works best when people are deeply skilled — and confident enough to risk failing. Psychological safety and talent development are non-negotiable.

• Scale the virtuous interaction between direction and discovery.
  As companies experiment, they generate insights that refine strategy. As strategy refines, it provides a sharper frame for future experiments. This interplay fuels sustained growth.

• Accept and even lean into tension.
  Structure vs. freedom, short-term vs. long-term, exploitation vs. exploration — these tensions are not problems to solve but productive spaces to inhabit.

Ready for what’s next