YVES Saint Laurent and Pablo Picasso—brilliant entrepreneurs as well as celebrated artists—claimed inspiration from muses.

The term “muse” has historically been used by men to describe the women they loved and made the subject of their creative work. The original muses were the mythological daughters of the Greek gods Zeus and Mnemosyne who represented the arts, science and history. But in the postmodern era, a muse has come to mean any particular individual or sensibility that profoundly influences one’s work.

The aesthetics of software and silicon design demand every bit as much creative elegance as a little black dress or diamond bracelet. Why shouldn’t design engineers have muses? Crafting a compelling user interface for the cloud is, in its own way, a work of art. Why shouldn’t Web designers look to muses to provoke and inspire? Anyone can hire a focus group. A muse offers the promise and potential of epiphany.

Innovative organizations are desperate for sources of design differentiation. Why not a muse? Why not an assiduously cultivated relationship with a sensibility that can really transform perception? After all, executives hire coaches; why shouldn’t creative innovators budget time and resources for a muse or two? To the extent that a business is creative, the role and impact of a muse might constitute “best practice.’’

Even the most technically intensive disciplines have their muses. John Markoff, The New York Times’ longtime Silicon Valley correspondent, describes Douglas Engelbart as “the canonical muse’’ for innovative interface design since his famous 1968 “mother of all demos’’ presentation at San Francisco’s Brooks Hall. Engelbart went on to influence generations of interface designers who came to him for advice.

Similarly, Carver Mead, based out of the California Institute of Technology, is a well-known Silicon muse for design engineers fabricating the densest and most complicated chips around.

Neither gentleman looks remotely like Audrey Hepburn—Givenchy’s fashion muse—but their design influence is at least as enduring and certainly more profitable.

Michael Schrage is a research fellow at the Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas.