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Business Artistry with Nir Hindie
Business Artistry is a podcast about creative leadership inspired by Renaissance thinking: the belief that our best ideas emerge when we combine the arts, technology, and business. In each episode, Nir Hindie speaks with artists, founders, and leaders working at the intersection of art, technology, and innovation, exploring the habits and mindsets that keep imagination alive in real organizational life. A show from The Artian, a creative leadership development atelier.
Business Artistry with Nir Hindie
050 - Mickey Drexler. Creativity Is Everything, in Anything.
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Millard "Mickey" S. Drexler built Gap into a cultural brand, launched Old Navy, led J.Crew, and now chairs Alex Mill. He also spent 16 years on Apple's board — and played a pivotal role in shaping the Apple Store as we know it today.
But this conversation isn't about the résumé. It's about how Mickey thinks.
He leads through taste, instinct, and an obsessive attention to what a customer actually experiences. He'll tell you data doesn't design product. That most CEOs never talk to customers. That creativity is in the DNA — and you can spot it in five minutes if you know how to look.
In this episode: what instinct actually is and where it comes from, why the best leaders protect the creative process instead of delegating it, how the Apple Store was born from a warehouse prototype and one honest conversation, and what it means to micromanage the customer experience — not the people.
A conversation about taste, imagination, and what it takes to build something people actually love.
Thank you to Mike Cerre for making this conversation possible.
Links:
- Alex Mill — alexmill.com
- Mickey Drexler on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/millard-mickey-drexler-1b00a9269/
- Business Artistry Course — courses.theartisan.com