Improbable Chair by Galeries Lafayette Art Thinking

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The Improbable Chair by Galeries Lafayette is all about bringing together artists and entrepreneurs, linking art with business in a new way.

It supports creative practices by connecting artists with entrepreneurs, businesses with cultural institutions, and artistic creation with business strategy. It encourages everyone to embrace the "improbable" to think like creators. Through a unique method called "Art Thinking," developed at ESCP, the Galeries Lafayette group and ESCP offer a way to support, encourage, and spread the act of creation.

 

Guillaume Houzé, Brand and Communications Director, Galeries Lafayette

A few words from
Guillaume Houzé
Brand and Communications Director, Galeries Lafayette group

“The Improbable Chair is all about bringing together artists and entrepreneurs, linking art with business in a new way. It supports creative practices by connecting artists with entrepreneurs, businesses with cultural institutions, and artistic creation with business strategy. It encourages everyone to embrace the ‘improbable’ to think like creators. Through a unique method called ‘Art Thinking’, developed at ESCP, the Galeries Lafayette group and ESCP offer a way to support, encourage, and spread the act of creation.”

Guillaume Houzé, Brand and Communications Director, Galeries Lafayette group Photo Credit: ©Lucasziwel

Sylvain Bureau, Scientific Director

A few words from
Sylvain Bureau
Professor at ESCP Business School
Scientific Director of the Improbable Chair

“Our initial belief was simple: to make creation accessible to as many people as possible. To achieve this, we developed a method called Art Thinking, which characterises how artists, entrepreneurs, and scientists go through similar steps in the creative process, such as gift-giving, deviating, destroying and drifting. For 15 years, our Art-Thinking seminars have trained thousands of students, entrepreneurs, managers, and researchers across a dozen countries and twenty universities and schools. Partnering with Galeries Lafayette group, a company with a strong entrepreneurial DNA, our chair combines theory and practice to amplify this approach and promote creators and creation in the broadest sense.”

Professor Sylvain Bureau, Scientific Director of the Improbable Chair

Objectives

The Chair has two major complementary goals:

  • Support scientific research to better understand creative practices
  • Teach the Art Thinking method and spread the Improbable pedagogy worldwide

Art Thinking not only helps participants unleash their innate creative potential; it also promotes collaboration, listening, leadership, negotiation, and constructive dialogue. Participants learn to question themselves, leverage failure, establish partnerships, and develop an agile approach to uncertainty.

Three areas of activity

Research and development

  • Scientific publications
  • Doctoral theses and final dissertations
  • Improbable Siesta: seminar bringing together researchers, artists, and experts in creation
Teaching

  • Spreading the Improbable method at ESCP and beyond
  • Designing initial training in Art Thinking
  • Training Art Thinking instructors
Events

  • Conferences and workshops on Art Thinking
  • Exhibitions and Improbable openings
  • Improbable residencies (art­ist/sci­en­tist/­en­tre­pre­neur triads)

“This Chair is the story of an encounter between visionary creators who understood early on how future generations of students and entrepreneurs would need artistic and creative practices to prepare for the world of tomorrow. Through this collaboration, ESCP is grateful to the Galeries Lafayette group for opening up new playgrounds for unprecedented and improbable creations!”

Pascale Pernet, Director of chairs and corporate sponsorship
ppernet@escp.eu

Focus on...

Group photo at the inauguration of the Improbable chair

Article

When Art meets Entrepreneurship

On Tuesday, 19th March 2024, Léon Laulusa, Dean and Executive President of ESCP, Jean-Stéphane Arcis, President of the ESCP Foundation, Philippe Houzé, Chairman of the Management Board of the Galeries Lafayette group, and Guillaume Houzé, Brand and Communications Director, Galeries Lafayette group, signed the first Chair dedicated to artistic and entrepreneurial creation.

Display :
13041 publications

Chapter

2018

SCHMID, S., A. GOMBERT

McDonald's: Is the Fast Food Icon Reaching the Limits of Growth?

in Strategies of Internationalization: Cases on Strategy Formulation and Implementation., Schmid, S. (Ed.), Springer International Publishing, pp. pp. 155-171, 2018

TV Appearance

2018

DESLANDES, G.

Médiarchie : information ou manipulation?

Xerfi canal, 2018

Guest Speaker in a Research Seminar

2018

CHAMAKIOTIS, P.

MedicineAfrica: Enhancing Commitment and Creating Value

Centre for Information Management, School of Business and Economics. 2018, Loughborough, United Kingdom

Conference Proceedings

2018

CHAMAKIOTIS, P., N. PANTELI

Members’ Commitment in Online Health Communities: The case of MedicineAfrica

in Beyond Digitalization—Facets of Socio-Technical Change, European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), 2018, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Book

2018

LEON, E., C. DEJOUX

Métamorphose des managers à l'ère du numérique et de l'intelligence artificielle

Pearson, 2018

Conference Proceedings

2018

VOYER, B., M. LEBAN

Millenial Micro-Celebrities Personal Branding Strategies on Instagram

in ANZMAC Annual Conference, Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (ANZMAC), 2018, Adelaide, Australia

Paper presented in a Conference

2018

LEBAN, M., B. VOYER

Millionaires and geo-tags: investigating millennials’ display of experiential luxury on instagram

in 2018 Global Marketing Conference, 2018, Tokyo, Japan

Paper presented in a Conference

2018

VOYER, B., H. KIM, C. GIRARD

More can be Less and Less can be More: A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Brand Prominence

in Luxury The Mystique of Luxury Brand Conference, 2018, Singapore, Singapore

Conference Proceedings

2018

AVGOUSTAKI, A., H. T. W. FRANKORT

Motivation-enhancing human resource practices and the dynamics of organizational performance

in Improving Lives, Academy of Management (AOM), 2018, Chicago, United States

Journal Article

2018

FRIEDRICH, J., M. THIEMANN, M. BIRK

Much Ado About Nothing? Macro-Prudential Ideas and the Post-Crisis Regulation of Shadow Banking

KÖLNER ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR SOZIOLOGIE UND SOZIALPSYCHOLOGIE, 2018