In business, politics, and life it's important to nurture those who share your perceptual and creative frame. But it also pays to nurture those who loathe you, who want nothing to do with your money, which hate the structure you represent, and who are fueled to produce their art or their craft by their drive to be the anti-you.

Those you take under your wing will give you new creative offerings that will be good for the next two years or so. But in three years time the public will grow tired of your taste and will hunger for something just a little out of kilter, just a little edgier. Where will they find that something with a different taste? Coming from those who get their juice from rebellion against you.

Captain Underpants, the current mainstay of Scholastic Publishing, is yesterdays anti-scholastic. South Park, the Cartoon Network hit, was once the anti-Cartoon Network. In a previous day, The Simpson's was the TV Networks anti-Charlie Brown.

Rock was once anti-disco. Disco was anti-rock. Rap was anti-ballad. Faith Hills country-ballads are todays anti-rap.

It pays to pay attention to those who get off on offing you. In fact it pays to get to know them. It even pays to invest in them. It pays to help them make the songs that seem to you like noise. It pays in more than cash alone. Your enemies help grow you. They help you learn new ways to feel and see.

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