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 :
13045 publications

Chapter

2012

SAUSSOIS, J.-M.

Pour une sociologie de la grande entreprise

in L'entreprise, formes de la propriété et responsabilités sociales., BAUDOIN R. (ed.), Collège des Bernardins, pp. pp. 531-557 27 p., 2012

Conference Proceedings

2012

JACOB, F., T. AYKAC, R. WILKEN

Power asymmetry in intercultural business negotiations and its impact on negotiation strategies

in Proceedings of the 41st EMAC Conference, European Marketing Academy, 2012, Lisbon, Portugal

Conference Proceedings

2012

JACOB, F., R. WILKEN, T. AYKAC, N. PRIME

Power asymmetry inintercultural business negotiations and its impact on negotiation strategies

in Proceedings of the 28th IMP Conference, Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group (IMP), vol. 28, 2012, Rome, Italy

Journal Article

2012

DESLANDES, G.

Power, Profits, and Practical Wisdom: Ricoeur's perspectives on the Possibility of an Ethics in Institutions

BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS JOURNAL, 2012, vol. Vol.31, Issue 1, pp. 1-24

Paper presented in a Conference

2012

FORTWENGEL, J.

Practice Transfer across Institutional Distance – A Case of Path Creation?

in Procedings of Annual Conference, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, 2012, Cambridge, United States

Paper presented in a Conference

2012

SAHAKIANTS, I., M. FESTING

Predicting the use of Executive Share-Based ompensation : Empirical Evidence from Poland

in Proceedings of the 11th World Congress of the International Federation of Scholarly Association of Management (IFSAM), 2012, Limerick

Journal Article

2012

RASKOVIC, M., A. PUSTOVRH, M. JAKLIČ

Pregled dejavnikov delovanja malih in srednje velikih visokotehnoloških podjetij v Sloveniji

IB REVIJA, 2012

Journal Article

2012

CHAPUIS, J. M.

Price Fairness versus Pricing Fairness

COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL OF THE PACIFIC, 2012

Book

2012

THOMAS, P.

Principes de finance d'entreprise

Les essentiels de la banque et de la finance, Paris, France, 2012

Contribution on blogs and Social Networks

2012

MAKOWSKI, T., P. FELIX, F. WALTER

Procurement in unsecure times

2012, Harvard Business Manager