MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
T iming in business has fascinated experts for decades. In a TED talk, Idealab founder Bill Gross tells how he studied 200 start-ups and tried to establish why some succeeded and others failed, despite having plenty of funding, a good team and a strong business model. His surprising finding was that in 42 per cent of cases timing was the determining factor. Gross says that while the idea, the team, the business model and funding play a significant role in business success, if the timing is off the enterprise will fail. He takes the example of Airbnb and says many investors initially didn’t think it would work. Back then, the US was in a recession and many people needed extra money, which possibly helped them overcome their objection to renting their homes out to strangers. The same was true in the case of Uber, as he notes: “The timing was perfect for their need to find workers because drivers were looking for extra money.” But how do entrepreneurs and start-up founders get that precious sense of timing right? Our new interdisciplinary research report provides some interesting insights from the world of music. Entitled Timing Matters: Applying Musicians’ Insights to Business , the study looks at how professional musicians use timing in composing, playing and collaborating when performing music. Musical maestros such as Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin and Taylor Swift have much to teach us about when to act, pause, shift direction and think ahead. Musicians and artists, with their well-developed timing and flexibility, offer valuable insights that can help bridge the gap between the theoretical understanding of timing and its practical application. In talking to a number of musicians, we learned that such skills were developed over time, requiring discipline, practice and resilience. Listening skills are vitally important, as musicians playing with others need to understand when to play or how to change things up. Good timing depends on acute awareness and attention to one’s environment. Most importantly, we learned that skilled musicians can alter the perception of timing due to its elastic characteristics, which is an eye-opening discovery.
We concluded that the skills and characteristics of musicians can be applied to the world of business by examining their understanding of timing and how this perspective is also relevant in a corporate management setting. Timing: the biological perspective Physically, our bodies follow the biological rhythms of the circadian clock. In this sense, timing is a pivotal biological function that supports fundamental and physiological processes. Timing is not confined to our internal body clock either. Researchers suggest that the cerebellum region of the brain is a “sophisticated sub-second interval timer rather than a monolithic oscillator”. This suggests that the cerebellum is engaged in tasks that demand precise temporal co‑ordination, such as musical performance and higher executive functions like planning, self‑regulation and decision-making. More recently, researchers have begun to study timing in the context of genetic and epigenetic changes, investigating the interplay between genetic elements and neuronal functioning. They are also examining the in-built role of timing in the functioning of human neural processes, bodily cell cycles and even the expression of our genes over time. Anyone who has experienced a lift in spirit by playing an upbeat song, or viscerally responded to the ebbs and flows of the African bush at night, can attest to the fact that external influences, more specifically natural rhythms, can shift their mood. This process is known as ‘entrainment’, explained in one study as “the phenomenon in which two or more independent rhythmic processes synchronise with each other”. In the same way that light and darkness impact circadian cycles, these insights compel us to ask whether it is possible for our innate timing to be consciously developed, heightening our abilities to comprehend and utilise timing in a business context. Moreover, they might be able to help ensure productive outcomes in commercial situations such as investment, marketing and product development. Ultimately, the question is whether or not business executives and leaders can develop these abilities in much the same way that trained musicians gain these skills after years spent practising and training. The research suggests that it is indeed possible and that to develop good timing people can start by paying closer attention to what is happening around them.
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Business Impact • ISSUE 2 • 2025
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