The small jet cruises over the huge sandy hook of Cape Cod, and before I know it, we're landing at JFK Airport. My destination is Fortune magazine's second annual Innovation Forum in New York City. Innovation is the magic elixir of the modern economy, and this may be the best conclave on the theme.

The presenters include the founder of FedEx; an author of the book Blue Ocean Strategy; the police chief who cleaned up New York City; the general manager of the Oakland Athletics; the designer of SpaceShipOne; a convicted felon turned health care revolutionary; the creator of a videogame empire; the president of Starbucks Entertainment (music, not coffee); and on and on.

This column isn't about the formal presentations; that's for another article. It's about the surprises you get whenever you head out in a new direction. Cultivating this awareness is a big part of strategic thinking. On this trip I keep getting a powerful message: the importance of aesthetics as a motivating force.

I haven't been to New York for a while, and most of my friends who once lived there have moved away. Joe Donovan, the writer, artist, musician, and gadfly with a wicked sense of humour, has died. So it's propitious when, at the Halifax Airport, I run into my friends Eldon and Anne MacKeigan. They're on my flight and invite me to hang out with them for the evening.
The taxi driver drops them at their Times Square hotel and takes me uptown to The Hudson Hotel on West 58th Street. It was an Ian Shrager property—now it's part of the Morgans Hotel Group—famous for its use of Philippe Starck's design. At first I walk right by the entrance—all of the clever design is hidden inside. Later, I meet my friends on the second floor of a restaurant that overlooks B.B. King's blues club. He's playing tonight, but it is sold out. Darn.

At supper the MacKeigans tell me about their business, a franchise of The Sandler Sales Institute, which trains salespeople. They are doing well; in fact, they won this trip. Tomorrow night they will take in a Bonnie Raitt show, and next week they will stay and make some business calls.

We repair to the Hard Rock Café and have a brew beside a pillar adorned by guitars that once belonged to Jimmy Page and Tom Petty. We're joined by a sales consultant for Precision BioLogic, a pharmaceutical firm based in Dartmouth, N.S. The ideas flow as easily as the beer.
A jazz musician plays for us as we ascend the elevator.

A combo plays on the main floor. The forum has enough on the agenda to fill five events—innovation on steroids. It has attracted 900 overachievers armed with BlackBerries and high on caffeine. But there is another, gentler vibe that must have been inspired by the venue. It's the power of the senses—aesthetics. Between sessions I walk into a room with displays of the jazz greats: images and music of Coltrane, Ella, and Miles.

The panel on design addresses aesthetics directly. The head of design at BMW says that “design is meaning.” The president of a California art school says that design is a “catalyst to find original ideas.” One panelist notes that in science and technology, promising new theories are judged on their elegance.

In the afternoon, a choreographer from San Francisco leads a pair of modern dancers through one of her creations. There's a novice painting class in a room outside. The instructor tells us that the best pieces were done by engineers.

In the evening we get a treat: a full-on performance by the East Village Opera Company, part classical ensemble and part rock band. The concert takes place in the Innovation Lab, which has been set up in a room with a huge wall of windows. It's as if we're hanging in space. The musicians are lit in the dark room: women in black dresses playing strings, rock musicians in jeans and leather, an undulating female and a male in a wool hat belting out Rossini and Verdi. Below, you can see the traffic looping around the statue of Columbus on his pedestal, then the lights of the traffic on Broadway and the Midtown nightscape beyond.

Later, I happen to meet the leader of the Company out on the sidewalk. He's a classically trained clarinetist from Ottawa who formed the group only a year ago. They now have a contract with a major label, but the money hasn't started rolling in yet. The lesson, as always, is that product innovation needs a complementary business model to succeed.

I walk past Lincoln Centre. The posters advertise the old masters, Beethoven and Mozart. The black-tie set mills about. Money old and new gravitates toward the arts. It's about meaning, as the car designer said.

New York is a whirl, a swirl. It's a dance of raw force and subtle beauty—a blend of opposites that can't help but create. Theory or no theory, you can't stop innovation in this town.