Prince performs at this weekend’s Hop Farm festival in Kent and I’m delighted to have a ticket for the occasion.  Check this performance of Superstition out with Stevie Wonder to see what you will be missing if you are not there.

Unlike many performers in rock’s monarchy, a Prince live performance is often different every night.  This is because Prince operates from a menu of 300 songs, which the band may be called upon to play at any time, whereas many other artists prefer to perfect and then repeat their set night after night.

I was discussing how Prince achieves such amazing levels of nimbleness and ingenuity with my colleague John Howitt, a professional musician who has performed for Celine Dion, Anastasia and Shirley Bassey to name but a few.  We came to a set of conclusions, with parallel lessons for businesses that are interested in being fast, nimble and continuously innovative. Here are a couple:

• To reach mastery in improvisation paradoxically requires intensive detailed preparation.  What looks like a seamless performance is the result of many hours of preparation and Prince is meticulous in this respect.  In business this has been referred to ‘the 10,000 hours effect’ by Tom Peters and, more recently, Malcolm Gladwell.  The idea of prepared spontaneity contradicts what some so-called creativity and innovation gurus say on the subject, yet we constantly see parallels across many industries.  Sloppy creativity produces sloppy results in many businesses.

• Prince is also a master of fusing musical genres and influences outside his core style to innovate.  This enables him to still exert a major influence on artists of the 21st Century, such as Lady Gaga, Beyonce and many others.  In business, the ability to cross mental boundaries is the parallel skill set, as exemplified by companies such as 3M and Google.

I explored more of Prince’s personal qualities and the relationship with becoming an agile, ingenious and innovative company within the book “Sex, Leadership and Rock‘n’Roll”.  John Howitt also draws a distinction between Prince’s level of risk taking on stage versus his experience of working with artists such as Celine Dion, who aims for a perfect, polished performance which can be reproduced night after night.

Both approaches are valid and rest on thorough preparation if you want to reach out for excellence.  An object lesson for all – if you want to be a star, know that perspiration is much more important than inspiration.  Let’s just see a little more of that prepared spontaneity from Prince via a structured jam called ‘The Everlasting Now’:

We will be exploring aspects of Prince’s approach to improvisation and innovation at the 7th International HR summit event in Athens, Greece on October 20th following on from Dave Ulrich.

Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock, delivering exceptional conferences and events that blend academic ideas on business with the power of music.

Managing Director of Easynet, Chris Stening gives businesses a timely reminder of what they might expect in less than two weeks time and offers the following advice:

“Traditionally, small businesses face a dilemma when deciding whether to allow employees to follow major sporting events during office hours. Whether it is through their PCs, phones or even pocket radios it is likely that fans will find a means of following the football regardless. This year however, small businesses need to consider the technical issue of bandwidth provision with large numbers of fans, especially those who are part of ‘generation Y’ who instinctively look to the internet to follow live events, using their work internet connections to follow the tournament.

We’d urge businesses to act now to avoid any reduction in connectivity or productivity. Smaller companies should audit their ongoing and future bandwidth requirements and ensure that their connection can support their most critical applications as well as managing spikes in demand. For example, one person viewing full HD streaming via the BBC’s iPlayer requires 1.5Mbps, so to have five people using this kind of service without impacting upon other services would require a minimum connection of at least 8Mbps without considering the bandwidth required by apps such as VoIP or email.”

Key Recommendations from Chris Stening, managing director, Easynet Connect:

- Early kick-off. Planning ahead will help you avoid paying the price of being caught by surprise and having productivity suffer as a result. It also means that businesses can avoid making reactionary decisions and measures once the football is underway.

- Match analysis. Speak with your ISP to get a full picture of how much bandwidth your business requires on a day-to-day basis as well as during peak times. This should give you an idea of the impact of staff using web streaming services upon other services, upon which you can base your decisions. It will also give you a picture of how heavily your business relies upon bandwidth.

- Team selection. It may be that your business is in need of increased capacity anyway, in which case it may be a good time to upgrade your current package, switch provider or to set up an extra line, such as an ADSL connection to carry low priority web traffic. If so, consider all of the technologies and packages available and make sure the option you choose is fully suited to your business and has the right back up options and service level agreements in place – it may be better value than you might think.

- Substitutions. There are technologies which can help businesses needing to manage their bandwidth. For example, MPLS technology lets businesses prioritise bandwidth for particular types of traffic, protecting the data transfer to the applications which your business relies upon.

- Rules of fair play. Web usage policies are far from a case of one policy fitting all and are completely dependent upon your staff and your business. Business should remember however that many people do still rely on their work as their primary means of accessing the web and the tools that it can provide. With the popularity of smartphones it is likely however that workers will find ways to follow the action regardless.

- The off-line rule. Don’t forget that you can keep up to speed with the football via traditional means without using up any bandwidth. Buying radios or even a TV for the office can be seen as a real treat and morale booster for your workers. Sensible usage will be advised but it is a sure-fire way of protecting your connection.

- Extra time. Consider using flexible working as a means to allow employees to make up for time spent watching matches out of the office. This also avoids the prospect of claiming sick leave in order to watch games.

Postal workers walked out last year throwing the UK postal service into chaos and threatening the future of the mail service that businesses and the general public have relied upon for many years.

It now appears that talks between the CWU and Royal Mail have achieved their purpose and the deal which gives postal workers greater job security, a shorter working week and a 6.9% pay rise over three years has been accepted by both parties.

There has also been agreement to plans by the Royal Mail to substantially transform the business and services over this three year period.

The CWU said workers will also receive lump sums of about £2,500 as well as weekly pay supplements and other improvements such as extra maternity and paternity pay, through the agreement.

Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier said: “This agreement is good for the business as it allows Royal Mail to get on with its modernisation, it’s a good and fair deal for our people, and it’s a good deal for our customers as it ensures stability over the next three years.”

The talks are expected to continue over the coming weeks and the two companies hope to reach an agreement by the end of October. The 50-50 venture  appears as the best option for T-Mobile UK who believe that the offers from Vodafone and O2 of £3.5bn undervalued their business.

Experts are agreed that the cut throat UK market has too many operators, with five licences granted and the merger should benefit the market by effectively reducing that number to four.

T-Mobile is currently the fourth largest mobile operator in the UK with a fifteen percent share of the market, equating to a 16.6million customer base. The biggest operator in the UK is O2 with 27% share followed by Vodafone with 25% and then Orange with 22%.

Although the French Telecom owned Orange are believed to be considering a bid of their own for the T-Mobile business, neither they or rivals O2 and Vodafone have made any comment on the report.

A decision from T-Mobile is expected within the coming weeks, a successful bid from either O2, Vodafone or Orange would make them the biggest mobile operator in the UK.

The alliance will also aim to unsettle Google who have recently expanded into offering free online software, that is seriously aimed at damaging the Microsoft dominance in that area. And  of course there is also Apple, who’s iPhone is ever growing in popularity.

Obviously irked by Blackberry’s dominance in the market, Nokia Vice President Robert Andersson told Reuters:

“This is giving some of our competitors – lets spell it out – R-I-M a run for their money. I don’t think BlackBerry has seen the kind of competition we can provide them now.”

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry created the market for mobile e-mail, and its dominant position in the corporate sector, especially in North America, has protected it from Nokia’s attempts to crack the market in recent years.

Technology moves on at a pace, in the computer world it is now commonplace amongst businesses to save and access files via Cloud Computing Services, making loss of data a thing of the past.

The company says that it is still on target with an increase in Talk Talk customer subscriptions of 47,000 for the quarter compared to 74,000 in the previous quarter and 36,000 before that.

The company blames thedownturn in revenue on the decline of voice only and dial up subscribers.

Carphone Warehouse’s purchase of Tiscali UK completed earlier this month will add 1.4million customers to Talk Talk’s 2.85million customer base, making the company the largest residential broadband supplier in the UK.

The European Commission said in a statement today that the transaction would not impede competition and indeed would face stiff competition from other players in the UK market, not least from BT and Virgin.

Telecoms and retail group Carphone Warehouse will now proceed with the cash purchase Tiscali UK in a deal worth £236million, making them the biggest domestic broadband supplier in Britain, with 4.25million users.

The deal is expected to be finalised by June, but is subject to approval by competition authorities and Tiscali obtaining formal approval to restructure it’s debt. Tiscali is believed to have over 600 million euros of debt and along with the cash offer from Carphone Warehouse, reported to be £236million, the Italian company are looking to further restructure it’s debt with a capital increase of 210 million euros.

Should the deal be finalised Carphone Warehouse will overtake Virgin Media as the UK’s biggest residential internet supplier and the second biggest including business users to BT.

Carphone CEO Charles Dunstone said “We are delighted to be acquiring Tiscali’s UK business — we know the business well and the fit with TalkTalk is perfect.”

The latest ‘big thing’ in computer technology Cloud computing is being taken up by many well established operations. The Cloud is a virtual server that allows you to save and access files on line, providing a space saving solution on computers and eliminating loss of data from system crashes.

The telecommunications market has not been hit so hard as other sectors during the financial crisis, but the market has shown signs of weakness particularly in developed markets. British Telecom and Virgin Media are already shedding jobs in the sector, a total of over 12,000 are expected to go between now and 2012.

On a brighter note, retail sales in the UK fell at a much lower rate than expected in February according to a CBI survey. The report suggests that supermarkets, footwear and leather stores appear to be holding up better than most. However the CBI say that it is  tough for many retailers who are having to shed jobs at a record rate.