The Beauty Of Business Artistry With Nir Hindie

A business cannot thrive if it is solely focused on earning and profit and tosses artistic thinking to the sidelines. Only those who understand the beauty of business artistry can unlock today’s greatest opportunities. In this conversation, Tony Martignetti explores the fusion of business strategy with creativity and human connection with Nir Hindie, founder of The Artian. Together, they discuss how art is one of the key elements in making your business timeless, trustworthy, and engaging. Nir also talks about the role of AI in generating art and what it means for the increasing need for emotional resonance in a highly digital and tech-driven world.

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The Beauty Of Business Artistry With Nir Hindie

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Nir Hindie. Nir is a global creative leadership expert and keynote speaker. He is the founder of The Artian, where he promotes business artistry, the fusion of business strategy with artistic thinking, creativity, and human connection. He is partnered with organizations like Google, TikTok, and SAP across 30-plus countries, helping them to integrate creativity into their core operations.

As a mentor and judge for Harvard and MIT's creative entrepreneurship programs, Nir shapes the next generation of visionary leaders. He also serves as an adjunct professor at IE Business School, blending real-world experience with academic insights to teach the power of artistry in business. He lives in Madrid, Spain. I am honored to welcome you to the Virtual Campfire, Nir.

Thanks Tony. I’m happy to be here. Every time I listen to this kind of introduction, it embarrasses me, but then I think about my mom, and I’ll say, “She will be happy.” At least, if I can make her happy, I'll let you go with that. Thank you, first of all, for having me on the show.

I love that you say that because we're recording this after Mother's Day here in the US. It’s a wonderful tribute, doing it for the moms. Thank you so much for making the decision to come on this show. I'm so thrilled to have you. Honestly, I love what you do, and we couldn't be more aligned with what we're doing in the world. I’m passionate about art, and you are as well, but also about how business gets impacted by bringing these two worlds together. I'm looking forward to exploring your journey as to how you're making an impact in the world. Thank you for coming.

We're going to explore your journey through what we call flashpoints. Flashpoints are the moments in your life that have revealed your gifts to the world. You can share what you're called to share, and along the way, we'll stop and see what themes are showing up. I'll turn it over to you to share those moments, but before we do, any questions you have?

No. I think you are asking me to reflect on the spot, but I thought about these points along the way.

Introducing Nir Hindie

Take it away, my friend. You can start wherever you like.

If I think about what brought me to do what I do, because everyone is asking, “How did you get to connect art as a way of thinking with business?” I always go back to my first memory of the arts. I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, and my parents sent me to a painting course. They wanted me to do creative stuff. I remember what the final painting of this course was. You learned by copying when you were young.

The painting that I needed to copy was Sunflowers by Van Gogh. That’s the first vivid memory I had because after the course ended, I didn't come back to art until I was in my 20s. I don't know if it's a concrete moment, but I remember that from a very young age, probably when I was 12 or 13, I was also interested in business. I remember at the age of 15 reading a business book. It's famous. I then read the biography of the legendary CEO of General Electric. I knew I was attracted to business, but I didn't know how to make the separation from entrepreneurship.

At 18, maybe toward 20, I got into the world of technology. What started my journey was while I was studying Economics. I had one slot that I needed to take an elective, and I took History. This brought back my passion for the art. I always knew that I loved creativity. I always knew that I loved architecture, but I thought that in order to be in the business world, I needed to study business. That's what I thought of.

I took this course, and it set me on this journey to relearn or educate myself about art. The next touchpoint, and I’ll give touchpoints throughout my every decade. In 2012, I was invited by the US State Department to participate in a Fulbright program in Minnesota. It was involved in being at the headquarters of 3M in Calgary and Wells Fargo.

That blew my mind to see what innovation means at a high level with fifteen years of strategic thinking. That was mind-blowing, so I decided that I had to leave my home country. I’m originally from Israel. It was by mistake that I came to Madrid. I didn't plan it, but twelve years later, I'm here. These are major milestones. I'm more than happy to speak about how the art developed through the milestones.

First of all, I want to start by saying how cool. I always think about when you're in school or when you're in those early days of trying to figure out, “What am I going to do with my life,” it's the electives that we take that sometimes are the best ones. I always remember those classes that were not part of my major but sparked the most interest. It comes from a place of “If I had any choice, what would I choose?” Not because I’m forced, but because I have free will at that moment. I can decide whatever I want.

It does bring something in. What ends up happening is it brings an element of where do I want my heart to go, and then seeing how that also started to lead you down this other path of how can I bring more of this into my life? I loved hearing that, and then hearing this journey of being part of these programs and seeing more exploration. Your ability to continue to explore has been a wonderful path. It’s great to hear.

Thank you. I think Robert Rauschenberg, one of my favorites, said that the power of a creative person is curiosity. That's the thing that always drove me. That's why I always make a joke that the thing I love the most is to read books. The thing that I hate the most is reading books because every sentence in a book can send me on a journey to another ten books that I want to read. I was buying books and reading. I probably need to retire it next year if I want to be able to read the books that I already bought. That's not going to happen.

Finding Purpose In Creation-Driven Work

You're hitting on something interesting. Sometimes our biggest strengths are also our weaknesses. It can be challenging. Curiosity is a wonderful gift, but it also can be a thing that, because it's never-ending, we have to also focus our energy on paths that allow us to do something. I love to hear more about how you created a path to something that was going to be a focus for you.

It's a great question. I always tried to understand myself. One of the things I realized is that I always like to create. That's one of the things that motivated me. I never had a real job. I always started my own company, my own ventures, whatever you want to call it, but I'm motivated much more by creation. I don't want to manage. That's also something I learned. I love to build, get it to a certain place that needs professional management, and then let other people manage it.

Why do I say that? Because the space that I felt more inclined to be in was innovation. When I graduated from my MBA program, I wanted to get into the innovation space, but all the innovation consultancies hire from the same business school, the same profile, using the same methods to be different. If everyone used the same, the consequence would be that you would be the same. I asked myself, “How can we offer something different?” This is where I tapped back on all my experience with artists in all those years.

At that point in time, I was already having a lot of friends who were artists, reading a lot about art, and already starting my own research about how our impact business, etc. When I started to look at the Innovation space, I realized a very important thing. Business is trying to execute. To execute or if you want to execute, or if you want efficiency and productivity, oftentimes what you need to do is look to the past. What did we do last year? How can we improve it?

When I looked at art, art is much more creation-driven, and art is never about the past. Art respects the tradition and the past, but to propel forward, it's always challenging what we have done. What I realized is that the artists are much more trained and prepared to think in an original way. I started to ask myself, “If that's the way of thinking that artists have, how does it manifest itself in the world? People tend to think, just like I thought when I was younger, that artists are painters. I realized that paint is just a medium. Technology can be a medium.

I want to show you a book. It's called Art and the Future. It's a book from the ‘70s. I like how they phrase it: A History or Prophecy of the Collaboration Between Science, Technology, and Art. Some of the most remarkable innovations that we experience today, to give one example, let's call it a representation mapping, which is oftentimes what we know as Google Street View. That was invented by a group of artists and engineers in 1978 in MIT.

I can give you many more examples of technologies that we are using and were conceptualized by artists. When I looked at that, I understood that the business world is so focused on innovation, but they are still looking at the same places in business and science without understanding that there is a whole space that can be opened for collaboration, and they can learn from.

It's not to say that business is better than art, or art is better than business. It is to say that there is a space for collaboration that we are missing. That was the main angle, but I can also dive deeper into how I think it manifests itself in leadership. I don't know if it's answering your question. I tend to speak too much. Feel free to cut me.

No, it’s perfect. One of the things that I love about it is how much your passion comes through when these topics come together. The time-traveling element of what you just did is a sense that these things have been happening. These conversations have been happening for decades upon decades, and we're still not quite comfortable with the two interplays coming together of art and business. It's still not quite something that people have come to grips with.

Let me correct you on one thing. It's not happening in decades. It's been happening for hundreds of years. Every time we think about the most creative period, we speak about the Renaissance and the Medicis, who were bankers. At a certain point, the biggest bankers in the world understood the importance of the arts and humanities in these conversations to foster more original thinking, for that matter. I'm just bringing back some voices from the past.

Destroy Something To Create Something

That’s so true. You're spot on. One of the quotes that comes to mind when I think about this, too, is one that I love. It comes from Pablo Picasso, who said that every act of creation is an act of destruction, which has me thinking about. When we think about the future, it's almost about deconstructing the past or taking the past and saying, “We know how things were done, but now we're creating something new that's based on a whole new paradigm.” I love to hear your thoughts on that because I could imagine that's bringing some thoughts into your mind right now, and then we'll get back into more of your journey.

It's something that I think we should aspire to achieve. Unfortunately, because of my background, I'm also involved in teaching entrepreneurship and supporting entrepreneurs, etc. We need to remember that we need to be thoughtful about our creations to repeat. That's, by the way, why I love art, because of the way the artists work. If I were to copy you, Tony, I would not be considered original. I might copy you again and again to learn where I can be different.

In business, we always try to see what works and copy it. That may be an act of creation, but whether it's an act of originality, I'm not necessarily sure. We need to be mindful of what the act of creation means, what the act of originality means, and what we want. Otherwise, we are living in a world that is flooded with so many things that we don't necessarily need.

Be mindful of what the act of creation and originality means. Otherwise, we are living in a world flooded with so many things we do not necessarily need.

I was thinking about when people are just getting started, sometimes you want to learn the craft, so you do imitate for the sake of learning the patterns and all that, but you have to know, “When am I going to do my original piece, which is going to be breaking ground on something different?” That's when we're creating that element of artistry. It’s tapping into something original.

I want to bring a beautiful quote over here that I heard, I don't remember exactly where. Think about craft as arrivals. You know where you're going. Art is about departures. They go together. Ed Catmull from Pixar said it as well, “Craft is what we are expected to know. Art is when we use what we know to push the boundaries.” We always need to think about it together. In business, we are diving too much into craft and forgetting the art. Art is where innovation happens.

Gathering Believers And Building An Audience

That is something that is going to stick with me. I haven't heard it like that. It's a well-said phrase. It's a wonderful way to think about innovation. I want to get back into your story and the journey to creating the audience. You've done a lot of things along the way, but what were the major flashpoints or a flashpoint that got you into saying, “I'm going to create something that is going to mix these two together.” I know there are a lot of things along the way, but tell me about the next big flashpoint that you want to share.

While I was in my MBA, I started the Art in the Business Club. I didn't know exactly. I didn't have a language for it. I needed to start forming it. Every time I spoke with someone, they challenged me. I think that the next step is that I have a very dear friend, Alex, who knows what I'm doing. He also loved art. He’s also in technology. One day, someone at a conference asked him, “We are doing this conference. We are looking for this type of speaker. Do you know someone?” He told them, “Yes, Nir.”

They reached out to me and asked me, “Are you giving a conference?” Back then, I didn't, but I said yes. They told me, “We want you to come and give a talk about art and entrepreneurship.” I went and brought my thinking, and that was another development. Suddenly, I needed to frame it in a way that the audience could understand, and it worked very well.

The next important jump is something that goes to everyone in your audience. It is that you have to have believers. When I went with this idea, I always went back and gave him the credit. He's a professor in the business school where I study and teach. His name is Joe. Joe, that's an opportunity. I'm telling you thank you again. Back then, he didn't teach me, and he didn't know me. While I was figuring out my way, I reached out to him to bounce ideas. I told him about it, and then he said, “Listen here. I don't know what you are trying to do. I don't understand it, but I feel that what you are saying is important, and I will give you the first chance to speak in my executive education course.” He opened the door for me.

From that moment, it's one believer and another believer and another believer. Another important moment happened when Google for Startups reached out, and together, with did the Google Creativity Week, bringing out these entrepreneurs together. A few months later, at the biggest summit in Spain, I suggested to them, “Let's curate a whole vertical on how artists pushed technology,” because when you go to startup conferences, across the board, they are the same. If you want to see something new, also invite people who think differently about technology, and artists are the ones who do.

There's something about what you did, which models the way of a Renaissance of sorts, the Medicis, and the sense of having people who are willing to believe in what is possible, and then also your departure from the existing. Everyone is doing things the same way, and then you decided that we can do this differently. That's where your art became this art. I honor you for that. That's interesting. There's something about that which continues to evolve in your work. Good for you.

Until it can be a formal discipline, I won't stop. That's my mission in the world. We need business artistry, and I'm more than happy to explain a bit more how I see it from a leadership standpoint. There are a few important aspects of this development, and then being invited to be a judge and a mentor in the Harvard program on creativity and leadership in entrepreneurship, and the arts at MIT. All those programs that try to bring these things together. What worked well for me is that I came from the entrepreneurial world, but I also respect, understand, and support the work of artists. It's always trying to find the delicate balance. At least, that's how I tried to think about it.

How AI Can Affect Art And Technology

I'm going to ask a challenging question. This is the one that's going to be the real zinger. In the world right now, where AI is pushing the envelope about what happens next, how do you think about this marriage of business and art? How do we think differently with AI as part of the equation? Is it going to stifle us, or is it going to enable us? What's your take on all this?

As we say, that's a great question. Let me tell you what I think. First of all, art and technology, throughout history, have always gone together. Even getting from natural colors back in the Renaissance to new colors or chemicals, that's technology. Photography is a technology that artists respond to and work with. I think that what you will see is that oftentimes, artists adopt technology much faster than the rest of society because what the space of art invites is exploration.

Naturally, artists are much more inclined to do that. By the way, OpenAI has an Artist in Residence Program. I don't know if people even remember, but when they started to experiment with Sora, their video creation, the first ones to have access to it were artists. You can see that this thinking of art and technology goes hand-in-hand throughout history. From my perspective on AI, I'll tell you one thing. It's funny, before our conversation, I published a post on LinkedIn. I wrote in it that we live in a time that is technologically advanced, but emotionally starved.

The role of artists in an AI era will increase even more because today, AI allows many people to create content. The question is, can it resonate with people? Can it invoke emotions in them? Can it allow them to feel human under all these technological advancements? Not only that you need artists who will use those tools in a more humane way, but there will be another role that I see of curation. We are bombarded with so much information that it's overwhelming. By the way, it’s among the young generations, so it's not only me being a Boomer over here.

People are starving for more curation, more quality, not more of the same. I don't see it as a threat. The only thing that I do think we need to be mindful of is how we use the work of artists in order to train those models. That's a matter of respect for the creators of the world, but that's a different discussion that needs to take place with the artists.

People are starving for more curation and quality, not more of the same.

I love that you shared that. That's a wonderful take on this. It's also the type of message that gives me hope that we're on the right path, as long as the right people are listening.

I think that's the key, that the right people are listening.

Bringing Business Artistry To The Spotlight

Tell me about what your next steps are going to be. Where do you see yourself taking the audience, and where do you see the impact that you could be creating, if you're willing to be as bold as to share it here?

When you started to introduce me, you mentioned the concept of business artistry. I want to elaborate on that to tie it back to your question. I just described the way artists work and how they respond to the world. This is one angle of what I believe comes under business artistry, but there is another angle that comes from the business world. What do I mean? When I looked at companies that are, in many ways, timeless and that people love, not timeless because they do good business, but people love them.

Every time I delved into what stood behind the company, I saw the founder. Oftentimes, those founders have a deep relationship with the arts. When you see the Polaroid in 1947, when Dr. Edwin Land invented it. Everyone who takes selfies doesn't know that it started in 1947 with the instant photography of Dr. Edwin Land. He saw himself as a cultural person. That's why he hired art and history graduates in 947 to work with his science team.

For that matter, he brought Ansel Adams, one of the most important photographers in the US, to be a consultant for the company. He didn't know why, but he knew that he needed his part in it. We can see the same way of thinking in Erwin Braun and Arthur Braun, the founders of Braun. People don't know how innovative, creative, and revolutionary Braun is, the German company. Now owned, I think, by Gillette. I'm not sure, but how innovative they were.

Just to give you an idea, they hired to be the head of their product, and we are talking about a hardware company back then, manufacturing radios, they hired a theater graduate and an artist doctor to be the head of the product. When you look at the product from ‘56, I would buy them to be because they are timeless.

The epitome of it is Steve Jobs. All those founders understood something very important. It's always about the creative vision. It's not about the technology. They didn't start with what technology exists today, what can we do with that? They started with the creative vision, and if technology didn't exist, they invented it. That's why they are considered innovative. Disney didn't want to invent a surround system for the fun of it. Disney wanted to make sure that when you went up to the cinema, you would experience animation in the best way possible. He understood that the surround system, not only the front speakers, would change your experience, and they invented it.

These founders understood the power of art. The power of art in evoking emotions, and they were smart enough to weave it into their companies. If I go back to your question, through my long answer, Tony, about what my vision is, just like we have an MBA, we need to have the same, for that matter, Master's in Business Artistry, to have more creative leaders. We have a lot of great, wonderful, and very important managers. The world needs more creative visionary leaders.

Many founders understand the power of art in evoking emotions. They were smart enough to weave it into their companies.

I can't tell you how resonant that is. I submitted a piece to Fast Company about why we need more creatives in the C-Suite and how important it is. You made my case very solid. I wish I had talked to you first. The future is going to be imagined. More imagination is what we need, and not just more spreadsheets. We need to have a sense of thinking about how we can think differently about that future, then all the other things come to the table. It's almost like we're able to create whatever we need to, but we first have to be more imaginative about what's possible.

I want to add something over here. If someone is listening to it and thinks that it's kind of new age or whatever, this is backed by business results. These are the things that I speak about in my keynotes, and I have my own course in the business school. I always ask the students before we start, for that matter, the course, how applicable art in business is, and I put it on a scale of 1 to 10. Very often, it will be 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe the optimistic one would put 8. I then asked him the same question at the end.

It's amazing to see how everything shifts to the side because I give them concrete examples. It's very easy to go and see the criticism about Disney, about Braun, about Dr. Edwin Land, about Steve Jobs, about Pixar in real-time to see those critiques, just to understand how right they were, and how financially strong they became just because they followed the creative vision, not what the market demands every three months,

If you only follow the market demands, you're going to be left behind. Shortsighted is what it is.

It's important to say that there are numbers behind it. I want every listener to know that there are numbers behind it. Creativity has a lot of value that you can put a number on, but that's one thing. When I speak about artistry, it goes beyond just creativity.

Building A Resilient Mindset

I hear you loud and clear, and I think that's something that we need to continue to beat that drum, not because we're the only ones who believe that. There's something solid behind this that backs it up. I want to bring this back to you for a moment. Is there anything that you want to share about what you've learned about yourself, a lesson you've learned about yourself that you want to share on this journey?

I can be very stubborn. In many ways, it's also time-resilient. You cannot imagine how many people kicked me out of the door when I came up with this idea. That's a shout-out to every believer out there who gave me the chance. At the beginning, there were very few, but they believed in my ideas even though they didn't understand them. Your question goes to what everyone needs to ask themselves. Why are you here on this planet? For me, if I try to be a bit philosophical, it is to make sure that every kid at the age of 8 or 9 don't need to choose between the left brain or the right brain to understand that if they connect the two, they are are in a much better position than the rest of us.

I agree. I love that sentiment, and then there's something about that, which is to say, what are you stubborn about? A lot of traits have double edges to them. Stubbornness can be seen as a bad trait, but it also hides a brilliance to it, which is to say that you're only going to be stubborn about certain things that matter. That also reveals your resilience of I'm willing to be resilient about these things that matter to me. You're not going to be stubborn about something silly or not important. There is also some of that, but it is important for us to reveal here, which is just that. What are you willing to fight for that you believe so deeply in?

I tried. I'm trying in my own small world, for that matter, to do it and have an impact where I can, as cliche as it may sound.

Nir’s Book Recommendations

Wonderful. Time is flying by. I have one last question to ask you, my friend. What are 1 or 2 books that have an impact on you, and why?

One of them is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. That's when I was in my twenties. It impacted me because it showed me what it means not to give up on your vision, and strive for excellence in a world that is so mediocre. It's so easy to be satisfied with the good enough. I'm coming from entrepreneurship, don't get me wrong. I know where you need to have good enough to shift, I know, but that cannot be our standard. That can be our way or our stepping stone for excellence. That's what I think is important. This is one book that impacted me.

You see, Tony, and for the audience who doesn't see it, I keep my books next to me, so it will always inspire me. The other book that impacted me a lot is Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. That's a book about the artist Robert Irwin. As someone who engaged with art and artists a lot, I haven't heard someone speak so clearly and so profoundly about what experience means, and what it means to be in art.

What's important to understand is that all of those things, when you, as a business manager or leader, think of human experience, it's not the color of your website. It's more than that. Learning how artists do that and working with them on making it more impactful, in my opinion, that's the right way to do it. To give maybe an anecdote that almost happened. He was invited to redesign the whole Miami Airport. Think how big this person is. These two books, learning about what it means to have excellence, and following the vision while the world, for that matter, stays the same, and Robert Irwin, an incredible thinker of art, I highly recommend those books.

Get In Touch With Nir

Amazing. I love that. First of all, Robert Irwin's book is fantastic. I have a copy myself, and The Fountainhead. I have not listened to that book, and I haven't read that book in a long time. It is a fantastic book. You, bringing it into perspective the way you did, was wonderful. This has been a great conversation, and I can't thank you enough for sharing all the stories, the insights, and what you're doing in the world. It's much needed. I'm grateful that you came on the show to share all that you did. Thank you.

Thank you, Tony. It's also people like you who give me the opportunity to help me amplify this message. I appreciate the opportunity and the great question. I had a lot of fun.

I appreciate that, and I'm looking forward to our continued work together to make a difference in the world. Before I let you go, I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you. What's the best place to discover more?

The best place is LinkedIn. I publish quite often. I also have my own Substack, where I publish every Sunday topics that I explore. All of it, just type business artistry, and you will see it, then just type my name, and you will see. Find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out. If you reach out, let me know if you heard it on Tony, so at least I know. Sometimes people reach out, and I don't know who they are. I'm a very nice person, but I want to make sure that I also add value to the people who connect with me. If anything from this resonates with people, I speak about those topics in front of people, trying to open their minds to what is possible when we connect disciplines, not necessarily separating them.

I love it. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that, and thanks to the audience for coming on this journey. I know you're leaving completely blown away and inspired. Let's go make a difference in the world together. Thank you.

Important Links

• Nir Hindie on LinkedIn

• Nir Hindie on Substack

• The Artian

• Art and the Future

• The Fountainhead

• Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

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