Inspiration counts!

When Billy Joel plays live, a marble bust of Beethoven propped up on his grand piano stares straight at him. Steven Spielberg once bought at auction the sleigh used by the young version of his hero Orson Welles’s character in the 1941 film Citizen Kane. And Howard Roark, the high-flying protagonist of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, has inspired numerous real-life industrialists.

But who is the muse of YOUR career? Four very different figures from fiction, film and art each offer a lesson for managers:

Mr Micawber

Mr Micawber, from Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield, who became a successful magistrate and bank manager in Australia after fleeing poverty in England.

Gordon Gekko

Private equity supremo Gordon Gekko, from Oliver Stone’s zeitgeist-fuelled 1987 film Wall Street: a cautionary tale of power and wrongdoing in the stockbroker scene.

Mickey Goldmill

Boxing manager Mickey Goldmill, from 1976 Sylvester Stallone vehicle Rocky, who managed the Philadelphia gym Mighty Mick’s Boxing – the venue where he reconditioned Sly’s character Rocky Balboa from a loan shark’s heavy to a prizefighting legend.

Salvador Dali

Flamboyant surrealist Salvador Dali. As well as being responsible for some of the most eye-catching art in history, Dali was brand manager for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, and in the same year designed the logo for Chupa Chups lollipops.