Less than a month ago, a famous painting was auctioned at Sotheby’s. It was expected to be sold for $300,000 to $500,000. It actually went for $1.5 million.

While this isn’t terribly surprising, it’s notable for the story that goes along with the painting and the sale.  It’s a Kansas City story, and in many ways, a tale of American identity and attitudes.

The painting is sometimes called the American Leonardo. It’s formal name is  “La Belle Ferronniere” or Portrait of a Woman done in the style of Leonardo DaVinci.

John Brewer, author of a new book The American Leonardo — A Tale of Obsession, Art and Money, was in Kansas City recently. He gave a vivid retelling during a talk at the Kansas City Public Library.

The story begins with a young couple in love in 1919. It’s Harry Hahn, a mechanic from Kansas, who marries a French girl Andree. A favorite aunt, Louise DuMont, gives the couple the old painting, believed to be a DaVinci — it had been authenticated as such by a French dealer.

The young couple comes to the US, where Harry opens a car dealership in Junction City. They intend to sell the painting to launch their fortunes in the US.

In 1920, Kansas City didn’t even have an art museum. The Nelson wouldn’t exist until 1927, and in the whole of the US, there were not a single museum with a DaVinci. For Kansas City, with big city aspirations, this would be a coup and could help change it’s cowtown image.

One of Kansas City’s best-known business leaders, J.C. Nichols, heads up a consortium to raise funds to buy the work. Quite exiting, until a reporter happens to seek a comment from Sir Joseph Duveen, who was a famous (and famously arrogant) art critic and dealer. Duveen might have been the most influential dealer at the time, having developed art collections for all the major American industrial giants — Mellon, Rockefeller, JP Morgan.

Duveen proclaimed the work a fake. Never mind that he’d never seen it firsthand.

Oh, the uproar! The deal to sell the painting in Kansas City falls through and Hahn decides to sue Duveen for slander and damages.

Now the egos really get inflamed. Duveen enjoys the publicity of the lawsuit at first, and hires European art masters to back him up in court. More egos, this time with a tinge of old world snobbery and intellectual superiority of intuitive judgment. They can “sense” the legitimacy of a work.

In the trial, Hahn’s attorney focuses on scientific evidence and plays up the contrast between American values (Show Me) and European snobbery. The jury is pretty solidly in Hahn’s camp, and Duveen settles out of court with Hahn in 1929.

Back to Kansas City. The Nelson has opened and is on an acquisition spree for great art. The city needs the best dealer money can buy and they hire … Duveen! He is the guest of honor at the Museum’s opening.

There are many other twists to the tale of the painting, which is mostly locked away in a bank vault over the ensuing decades.

Hahn later divorces and bitterly attacks what he calls the “art racket.” He writes a book, with support of Thomas Hart Benton, the Kansas City artist, and Frank Glenn, a rare book dealer. The book tells the story of the little man fighting against the art monopolist, but the book may have had its own ulterior motives in reigniting the controversy.

Now, with the January 2010 sale of the painting, we prepare for a new chapter.

Recent evaluators estimate that the painting dates from the 17th century, and they note that it contains pigments consistent with those Leonardo DaVinci would have used — perhaps even more consistent than a never-doubted DaVinci in the Louvre.

Meanwhile, we don’t know who the new owner is — only that it is an American in the entertainment industry. Another new character, another mystery.

This industrialist now owns a beautiful painting and it hardly matters if the painting is an authentic DaVinci or not.

Perhaps the true value is the story itself, the artwork as a foil for a study of human nature, greed, ego, cultural biases, the tension between art and profit.

Maybe this fascinating painting will again be the subject of critical assessment and scientific review, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a new ending to the tale.

So I was delighted and surprised,to hear two of the great exemplars of the humanities make an impassioned case for the importance of telling stories.

It was a conversation held at the Kansas City Public Library January 21, 2010, featuring James H. Billington, Librarian of the Library of Congress, and his brother, David Billington, engineering professor at Princeton University. The dialog was facilitated by Crosby Kemper III, director of the KC Public Library.

The brothers, born on the same day two years apart, told of their upbringing in Pennsylvania, surrounded by books, deeply affected by their father who held long discourses with them, nurturing their curiosity. It obviously worked. He instilled a love of reading and scholarship in them, and while they pursued different career directions, there’s a common foundation in their approach and worldview.

Books — and the stories they contained — shaped both of them. David tells how, as an 18-year-old in the Navy, he was reading Jane Austen. “I experienced so many words I didn’t know,” he recalled, “words like ‘solicitude‘ and ‘felicity.’” He luxuriated in the sounds of the words, looked them up and absorbed their meaning. James recalled reading War and Peace, becoming hooked on Russian literature because he saw “something mysterious” in people, in how we repeat lessons of history. He found lessons in the human elements in stories and in how cultural expressions can be a predictor of events.

“You can learn more from yesterday’s novel than from today’s newspaper,” he said, with a bit of wistfulness. Later, he criticized what he saw as a decline of language, a profound problem in the lack of structure he sees in popular media; and described books as critical to our democracy. More on that later.

David was drawn to engineering, but James pulled him also to history and art. The two continued their tradition of discourse about what each observed, and clearly they learned from each other. David learned that science was important to engineering, but not the most important part — engineering is an art form, a spark of human creativity.

As proof, he was prepared with slides: the 1874 Eads Bridge in St. Louis, the first bridge named for its engineer; the Salginatobel Bridge (his personal favorite); the Brooklyn Bridge; the Boston Bridge, now an icon of the city. The great engineers were artists first, and the great innovations were accomplished by individuals with a strong sense of imagination and ideas.

James told how he was influenced by Thomas Jefferson’s approach to organizing his famous library at Monticello, the seeds of what became the Library of Congress. It was simple, just three categories: Memory, Reason and Imagination.

“It was a way of pulling things together, instead of pulling them apart,” he said. What’s most important is the human element — the story of how people lived, what they thought, how they acted, what motivated them. As Librarian at the Library of Congress, his charge is the story of America, a story told by human documents.

Democracy and books are intertwined in his telling of the story. Our system of government was the only one formed in the age of print and with the values of that age — the tolerance, freedom, creativity. He reminds us that the root of liberty is the Latin libre meaning book.

“If Democracy is to survive and prosper, we must keep the values of the book culture, while embracing innovation, science, society and imagination. We must understand our story,” if we are to be able to understand others’stories.

Civilization needs builders, he said in a nod to his brother. We need to tell stories of builders to understand how to do more. David offered a supporting thought to the power of pulling together: What if we could allow a single person to design an overpass? Instead of a specialist for the abutment, the grading, the design, the trusses, etc. And what if we put up a plaque with his name on it? He would become responsible for it. Ah, the power of the concept of individual responsibility — a foundation of our Democracy.

The power, and our responsibility, is to bring together without taking apart, to add without subtracting, he said again. How do we know? It’s in the story.

“Stories prevail over theories,” he said. “Stories unite people; theories divide them.”

I heard a too-brief presentation recently from Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future. First off, he described his task as a futurist: to offer a plausible forecast in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. VUCO world, for short.

Then he offered a secret on how he does his job: Start by looking farther out ahead, and then work your way back to the near-future. He said things are much clearer farther out, say 20 years in the future, and much harder to specify one to three years in the future. Besides, he says his role as a forecaster is not to predict, but to provoke.

He described several future scenarios that appear certain to him — for example, connectedness will increase in importance, as wireless communications melds with sensors connected to everything. He gave a convincing argument by showing how Helsinki and Tokyo are using the combination today: you can use a cell phone to scan bar codes on products on grocery shelves, and you’ll get a read-out of consumer ratings on the product. You pick your shampoo based on its environmental, health or societal rating, whatever matters most to you.

The best sound bite of his talk (in my view) was his proclamation: The word “consumer” is obsolete. It’s almost an insult to be called a consumer.

Every person is connected in a social network, and technology has amplified those networks. It’s a participatory culture. Johansen noted that the Institute for the Future embraces this participatory and open-source culture, and uses crowd-sourcing techniques to solicit input to its forecasts. (See Open Source World and other related posts on openness.)

Back to the insult of being a “consumer.”  Johansen argued that a coming trend favors self-identification as “makers” — people who are actively contributing to society, in whatever form fits, whether it’s cooking dinner or writing a novel or woodworking. Makers are contributing, active, participating.

He has tracked the rise of the Maker movement, noting Maker Faires springing up to celebrate creativity vs. consumerism, including in the Bay Area (of course!), Austin and around the world. (Should we do one in Kansas City?)

I think he’s on to something here.

I think there is a new awareness about the negative components of consumerism.  Bill Moyers had a brilliant conversation with Andrew Bacevich on this topic almost a year ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  (Among the best parts: his description of America as an “empire of consumption.”) You can find it here.

A common thread in both theses is the participation of the individual in the SOLUTION.

The future  isn’t going to come from an establishment. Nobody trusts corporations or government to create the future. No, it’s up to us.

Johansen had a sticker on his laptop that says it all: I am making the future.

I like it.

I am making the future.

More from Bob Johansen here: Bob Johansen – Book Section Brief from Institute for the Future.

With the open culture driven by social media, transparency is demanded: it is a component of your reputation, measured by your authenticity.

And it’s an uncomfortable spot for most traditionally minded businesses.

The examples of missteps are everywhere — one great source is The Naked Corporation, by Don Tapscott, which compiles examples and describes the damage to corporate reputation:

• Diebold insisted its voting machines were hacker proof until a professor showed how it could be done on a You Tube video
• Corporate memos from Eli Lilly, Enron, etc., showed company practices that didn’t match the company’s words.
• Lies and misdeeds can’t stay hidden; and the longer they are, the worse it is for the offending company’s reputation.

As always, some companies are willing to step up to the challenge and are responding with openness and actively engaging customers, stakeholders and employees.

I’ve talked before about firms that openly share their plans and perspectives, in blogs and webcasts, as well as companies that seek input.  Southwest Airlines does a good job of engaging its customers and employees to weigh in on pending decisions; Sun Microsystems (an early open systems advocate) encourages open dialog in interactive blogs, from the CEO on down.

But my new favorite may be Air New Zealand, taking the concept of the naked corporation with nothing to hide to new heights. Enjoy!

Additional resources on transparency: I love Kevin Kelly’s recent Wired article on the New Socialism;  while at Wired also check out an early report on Tapscott’s book.  And it’s worth watching what’s up at the Sunlight Foundation.

In his novel Old School, one of his characters takes the step of writing out (retyping) great works, to learn and appreciate the craft and mastery of the author.

In a way, I’m doing the same — I listened to his eloquent and thoughtful discussion, and by hand, I copied his spoken words out into my notebook. Here, (hoping I will continue to absorb his teachings) I offer another form of my notes,  some of my favorites of his comments, mostly imperfectly paraphrased.

Talking about Old School:

• It’s a story of moving from one world into a different one, a completely different on with different speech, culture, pasttimes, and so on.

• It’s an exploration of the idea of vocation — how we decide what we will do with our lives. And identity — how do we become the person we are going to be?

• I wanted to explore imagination, the role of imagination in forming identity: “We can only be who we can imagine being.”

On his writing & approach:

• For me, getting it down is the hard part; it produces terrible anxiety: there’s nothing there, I’m fooling myself, I’m  impersonating a writer.

• But after the story is down, I enter the process of re-writing with real joy. It’s the artistry. I love shaping the thing, writing is the clay I work with.

• It’s not the same with other writers. Updike, Chekov, could write good drafts; they write in their heads before it gets down on the page.

• There are as many writing styles as there are writers.

• I like a schedule but it’s not rigid. It’s better to have a loose hand on the reins to be equipped to deal with the things life throws at you — the car will need an oil change or someone will need to be picked up from soccer practice. You can’t just say ‘no, I have to write…’

• He described how growing up he always felt like an outsider. He said he suspects most writers feel like outsiders:  “If you’re comfortable, there’s less impetus to write.”

Guidance for writers:

• I take for granted that if you want to be a writer, you read alot. You read great writers. You have to marinate in it.

• Your critical capacity may develop earlier than your own writing ability. This caries a danger of frustrating yourself. Apply patience, be patient with yourself.

• It happens over and over, with practice, with time. “Time is your enemy in almost everything in life, but not in writing.”

Kudos to the library for such a great event. More details on The Big Read available on the image at right.

For another view of Tobias Wolff, check out his performance with the Mountain Goats’John Darnielle, singing “Woke Up New:”

In his novel Old School, one of his characters takes the step of writing out (retyping) great works, to learn and appreciate the craft and mastery of the author.

In a way, I’m doing the same — I listened to his eloquent and thoughtful discussion, and by hand, I copied his spoken words out into my notebook. Here, (hoping I will continue to absorb his teachings) I offer another form of my notes,  some of my favorites of his comments, mostly imperfectly paraphrased.

Talking about Old School:

• It’s a story of moving from one world into a different one, a completely different on with different speech, culture, pasttimes, and so on.

• It’s an exploration of the idea of vocation — how we decide what we will do with our lives. And identity — how do we become the person we are going to be?

• I wanted to explore imagination, the role of imagination in forming identity: “We can only be who we can imagine being.”

On his writing & approach:

• For me, getting it down is the hard part; it produces terrible anxiety: there’s nothing there, I’m fooling myself, I’m  impersonating a writer.

• But after the story is down, I enter the process of re-writing with real joy. It’s the artistry. I love shaping the thing, writing is the clay I work with.

• It’s not the same with other writers. Updike, Chekov, could write good drafts; they write in their heads before it gets down on the page.

• There are as many writing styles as there are writers.

• I like a schedule but it’s not rigid. It’s better to have a loose hand on the reins to be equipped to deal with the things life throws at you — the car will need an oil change or someone will need to be picked up from soccer practice. You can’t just say ‘no, I have to write…’

• He described how growing up he always felt like an outsider. He said he suspects most writers feel like outsiders:  “If you’re comfortable, there’s less impetus to write.”

Guidance for writers:

• I take for granted that if you want to be a writer, you read alot. You read great writers. You have to marinate in it.

• Your critical capacity may develop earlier than your own writing ability. This caries a danger of frustrating yourself. Apply patience, be patient with yourself.

• It happens over and over, with practice, with time. “Time is your enemy in almost everything in life, but not in writing.”

Kudos to the library for such a great event. More details on The Big Read available on the image at right.

For another view of Tobias Wolff, check out his performance with the Mountain Goats’John Darnielle, singing “Woke Up New:”

Wednesday afternoon while on a run, I saw my first crocus of the season — a tiny cluster of purple petals with golden faces,  just next to a small snow patch.  At home, I Twittered my delight — well, almost — I stopped.

What does this have to do with business? Why would anybody care? I thought of  the current Doonesbury strip and all the now-trendy criticism of Twitter.

But I kept thinking about it. Then in a moment of serendipity,  Science Friday on NPR discussed the phenologists who are enlisting observers to help document nature’s events — things like the date of the first crocus, first jonquils, first dogwood blossoms. Suddenly, my Twitter-that-almost-was had a meaning — a hyperlocal contribution to the scientific record. As a citizen scientist, my observations can support the development of a predictive model to help us understand the climate. (Plus, I get to share my delight at the same time.)

It seems easier than ever for the individual to contribute to a larger goal in small but meaningful ways. The contributions can be widespread, from hyperlocal to global, gathered and measured and applied.  It’s not just a nice philosophy — mass collaboration,  crowdsourcing and open source models are real and can be applied to drive business results.  See Wikipedia as a real-world success story and Wikinomics for dozens of business applications.  Think of the open source model of software development, where anyone can contribute an improvement — apps,  widgets, ideas. A population of citizen scientists, citizen journalists, developers; a population of contributors.

Oh, count me in!

It’s an open source world and that bodes well for businesses that are willing to participate — that is, to listen to customers who will share ideas and feedback.  It can drive business results — marketshare, customer loyalty, innovation, employee engagement can all be measured in the bottom line.

Let me know if you want to explore more. I’m open.

PS:  There’s more to come on this theme. In upcoming posts, I’ll address:

• the idea of tapping into hyperlocal expertise for news reporting (citizen journalism — I’ve been intrigued by this for a long time).
  
• the naysayers who challenge open source models, not believing in the accuracy of the amateur contributors (perhaps my crocus had actually bloomed on Tuesday and I just didn’t see it then).
  
• the wisdom of crowds and the use of predictive markets as a business tool.
  
• the potential army of spies,  the omnipowerful database and privacy challenges — and how businesses can manage privacy risks.
  

I recently read a wonderful book, Playing the Enemy, Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, by John Carlin. It’s packaged as a sports book but it’s much more — contemporary history and a study of the  leadership skills of Nelson Mandela.

I’ll admit up front that Mandela has long been a hero of mine. I remember my early awareness of Mandela, when I was just a high school student — it was an early experience of outrage that this man had been behind bars for nearly my entire life. I loved the anthem to him and did my part to avoid doing business with apartheid-supporting business (I remember running out of gas once because I refused to stop at a Shell Oil gas station).

But what I didn’t really understand until I read this book is how Mandela used his personal communication and collaboration skills to knit the country together, one person at a time. And that his power as a communicator was such that each person he engaged also spread the message to an ever-widening circle of people as well. His strategy brought black support to the so-called “white man’s game” to gain the unity of the entire nation.

The book describes the power of rugby, which is practically a religion in South Africa. The game is emotionally charged, though, as South Africa’s team had been notoriously racist — an embodiment of white supremist rule — and  as a result had been banned from international play as a protest against apartheid. In 1995, the ban dropped after Mandela’s election to presidency, South Africa’s Springboks have a shot at the World Cup.

Where others saw a sporting event, Mandela saw the potential to unite a nation.  He collaborates, quietly and effectively, using his legendary charm until he has won over each member of the team. They are humbled by his attention, by his interest in them and he helps them see that they can represent something much greater. The team demonstrates their commitment to Mandela by learning the South African Black resistance anthem and singing it at the games. The black population turns rugby-mad, and soon all political factions drop their former biases and unite in support of the team of young men playing for the championship.

But the team plays for more than just a title — they play for the honor of their country, for its redemption, for courage. I finished the book in tears, and in awe of the leadership lesson.

UPDATE: Clint Eastwood has the rights to the book and the film version has begun, with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the captain of Springboks rugby team. More details here.