Walk into any design institute or academy, and it won’t be hard to find students with all kinds of romantic and idealistic associations with working in the creative arts. However, as Natalya Popovicheva’s career at Mir Dyetsva underscores (see Page V), ambitious artists and designers must embrace business sensibilities as well.

Most would argue that business and the arts require contradictory skills, rarely found in a single individual. This may be so. But it is unlikely that the reason for it is because artists are innately poor organizers or business types are inherently uncreative. These are popular beliefs, but are generally mistaken.

Often, people box themselves into preconceived ideas of what they are good at, and their educational background along with the culture of their profession reinforce these ideas. A colleague here at The Leader who is struggling to learn Russian says he is not a "language person," but it is more likely that he has never really learned how to study languages, or opened himself up to the process.

Those who aspire to advance their careers as designers in the corporate world must recognize that there is an art to business. A good product designer, say of a cell phone, must not only make the device look snazzy but serve its function well; and to do that he must have a sharp sense of consumer needs. Similarly, a skillful businessperson must be mindful of a product’s image and how it will be used — that is, after all, what selling is all about.

Indeed, between the two ways of thinking, there can be a great deal of overlap. It is just a matter of seeing it, and acting on it.