Build a Blue Bike

About Build a Blue Bike:

According to scholar Thomas Homer Dixon the "ingenuity gap"- the space between problems that arise and our ability to solve them- is growing today at an alarming rate in business, scientific research, education, the enviornment and world affairs.

Author Ken Robinson proclaims we are "Out of our Mind" to have sidelined creativity and the arts when every layer of American society from elementary education to supply-side economics is starved for more imagination, more original thinking, and more creative intelligence.

In these economic times, innovation is a critical tool that can grow revenue like never before and catapult our largest companies and newest start-ups to new levels of international competitiveness and profitability to save our economy.

So who is teaching our future artistic leaders how to creatively innovate when our skills are so desperately needed?

The intersection of innovative artistic pursuits and business training is found through entrepreneurial development. My name is Lisa Canning and my book Build a Blue Bike has been written to provide a bridge for this gap in artistic development, providing a new standard of competitivness for artists globally.

Build a Blue Bike will help you understand how to assemble the components you need to produce financial freedom while learning how to sustain your own unique artistic process throughout your life.

As a professional clarinetist and a self-taught entrepreneur, I have learned the hard way to blend my own creativity with business. With more than 20 years of working with artists, in a variety of capacities, while building four successful multi-million dollar businesses founded on artistic passion, I spent 10 years developing and teaching creative career development to artists at DePaul University in Chicago. Through teaching other artists how to turn their creative passion into a productive and financially profitable enterprise, Build a Blue Bike was born.

In Build a Blue Bike you will learn how to direct your personal creativity into an entrepreneurial venture, thereby developing the economic muscle your creativity needs and deserves to thrive financially. Build a Blue Bike is for artists and those who wish to be employed full time using their artistic talents. It is also for anyone who seeks a passionate life supported by the economics of an occupation that isn't necessarily a nine-to-five job.

For more information about Build a Blue Bike: Turn Your Artistic Ideals into Entrepreneurial Ideas contact me. 

"Lisa Canning's "Build a Blue Bike" is a must read for all artists. 
From it, they will all learn that artistic excellence is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success, while gaining exciting new insights into the development of entrepreneurial imagination and the possibility of a much  broader new role for the arts in America's future."  

Robert Freeman
Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professor of the Arts
Director, Bryce Jordan Arts Entrepreneurship Incubator
The University of Texas at Austin

former Dean of the Eastman School of Music