Kohler’s unusual trick to spur innovation: let artists use the factory

Artist David Franklin was sitting on a tree stump in rural Washington state when he answered a phone call that would change his life. In the early 2010s, Franklin was having difficulty finding creative work, and had taken a position as a timber cruiser, taking measurements in remote groves of trees for a forestry company. He had also applied for a role in a factory. But it wasn’t an ordinary manufacturing job. It was a specialized residency program that places a dozen artists each...