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

Paper presented in a Conference

2012

LAROCHE, H., F. ALLARD-POESI

Unmasking Spies in the Corporation: When the police order of discourse erupts into managerial conversations

in Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies (PROS), 2012, Kos

Journal Article

2012

FESTING, M., S. ROYER, C. STEFFEN

Unternehmenscluster schaffen Wettbewerbsvorteile. Eine Analyse des Uhrenclusters in Glashütte

ZEITSCHRIFT FUHRUNG + ORGANISATION (ZFO), 2012, vol. Vol. 81, Issue 4, pp. pp 264-272 9 p.

Paper presented in a Conference

2012

SHELDON, R., C.

Upgrading the upgraded? Applying global value chain analysis to firms in the high value-added manufacturing sector

in Global Shifts: Implications for Business, Government and Labour - Massachussetts Institute of Technology, 2012, Boston, United States

Edited Book / Textbook

2012

K. BROWN, J. BURGESS, M. FESTING, S. ROYER

Value Adding Webs and Clusters

Rainer Hampp, München, Germany, 2012

Conference Proceedings

2012

BRUNS, K., J. SIEVERT, F. JACOB, M. BICK

Value-in-Use of Mobile Technologies

in Proceedings of Mobile und ubiquitäre Informationssysteme MMS, Mobile und ubiquitäre Informationssysteme MMS, 2012, Braunschweig, Germany

Journal Article

2012

BICK, M., K. BRUNS, J. SIEVERT, F. JACOB

Value-in-Use of Mobile Technologies

LECTURE NOTES IN INFORMATICS, 2012, vol. MMS2012: Mobile und Ubiquitäre Informationssysteme, pp. 57-67

Chapter

2012

ZANNAD, H., G. GALINDO

Vers un décryptage de la diversité des postures dace à la religion en entreprise

in Management et religions : décryptage d'un lien indéfectible., BARTH I. (ed.), Management et Société, pp. pp 61-81 21 p., 2012

Paper presented in a Conference

2012

DUBOCAGE, E., G. GALINDO

Vers une typologie du remplacement du dirigeant

in Actes de la XXIème conférence de l'AIMS, 2012, Lille, France

Conference Proceedings

2012

NAVAZHYLAVA, K.

Virtual Spaces as Agency Cost Minimizer - In Materiality and Space in Management and organization studies

in Organizations, Artifacts and Practices Workshop, Paris Dauphine University, 2012, Paris, France

Journal Article

2012

DELATTE, A., J. FOUQUAU

What Drove the Massive Hoarding of International Reserves in Emerging Countries?

REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS, 2012, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 164-176