The Art Thinking Method: How to Create the Improbable with Certainty

In a world increasingly shaped by complexity, ambiguity and systemic upheaval, conventional business methods often struggle to deliver meaningful solutions. At the intersection of creativity, entrepreneurship and disruption, Sylvain Bureau, professor of entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School, offers a compelling alternative: Art Thinking.

A researcher, educator and co-founder of the Art Thinking Collective and the Jean-Baptiste Say Institute for Entrepreneurship, Bureau has spent more than a decade refining the Art Thinking method in collaboration with artists, executives and cultural institutions across the globe. He describes it simply as a method designed to help people create the improbable with certainty.

We spoke with him to explore how Art Thinking can help build the futures we can’t yet imagine, but urgently need.

What Is the Art Thinking Method?

Art Thinking invites participants to adopt an artist’s mindset to spark innovation. Rather than refining what already exists, it focuses on generating new forms of value, even in unlikely or ambiguous places. “It doesn’t aim to turn everyone into Picasso or Steve Jobs,” Bureau says, “but instead empowers individuals, even those outside traditional creative fields, to generate new value in uncertain contexts.”

While design thinking typically starts with user needs and existing problems, Art Thinking avoids what Bureau calls the “installed client.” Instead, it begins with personal values and ideological friction. “It doesn’t begin with what’s probable,” he explains. “But with personal values and ideological commitments. It is as much about inner coherence as it is about societal transformation.”

The method is structured around three core dimensions:

• Theoretical content – foundational concepts, frameworks, and case studies.
• Practical skills – honed through exercises and creative experimentation.
• Extraordinary experience – culminating in the public display of participant artworks, often in major cultural venues.

It unfolds through six steps: Donate, Deviate, Destroy, Drift, Dialogue, and Display — each designed to disrupt conventional logic. “In this context,” Bureau says, “the unknown becomes an artistic material. Art Thinking equips people with a heuristic for working with the unknown — not as a problem to solve, but as a resource to activate.”

The method has been taught in more than 15 countries, from Japan to Armenia. Participants include artists, educators, executives and organisations like Orange, KLM, BPCE, and SACEM. Its power, Bureau argues, lies in combining values, emotion, and critique — “elements all too often absent from innovation culture.”

A method born at the crossroads of art and entrepreneurship

The method’s origins are, fittingly, improbable. In 2008, at a wedding, Bureau met artist Pierre Tectin and the pair found themselves deep in conversation about art, politics, and the nature of creativity. That dialogue sparked a collaboration that led to the first Art Thinking seminar — Improbable — held in 2011. Its format: no fixed syllabus, just a collective dive into uncertainty.

“We used the method itself to develop the method — an iterative, living process,” Bureau says. As the model evolved, he noticed recurring themes in successful creative work — whether in science, business or the arts: drift, critique, emotional intensity, and the willingness to act without knowing the outcome.

“It has been refined through incremental improvements: research, trainer education, contributions from experts like theoretical physicist and artist Christophe Bruno. Though the methodology stabilised around 2018, Bureau describes it as deliberately open — “dynamic and adaptive by design.” The method adapts to its environment rather than imposing a single model. For Bureau, this responsiveness is a key differentiator: “It avoids the homogenisation that characterises much of global business education.”

As the boundaries between disciplines blur and the need for radical innovation grows, Art Thinking offers a powerful compass for navigating the unknown. By reconnecting business with imagination, emotion, and critical thought, it prepares the next generation of leaders to not only adapt — but to shape the future.

As business education faces mounting pressure to address global challenges, Art Thinking offers a way forward — not by providing fixed answers, but by reframing the questions we ask. “Artistic approaches can help us reframe the world’s biggest challenges — from climate change to social fragmentation — and invent new ways forward. That’s the power of Art Thinking.”