Improbable Chair by Galeries Lafayette Art Thinking
See this page in
[FR]
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.
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
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
- Scientific publications
- Doctoral theses and final dissertations
- Improbable Siesta: seminar bringing together researchers, artists, and experts in creation
- Spreading the Improbable method at ESCP and beyond
- Designing initial training in Art Thinking
- Training Art Thinking instructors
- 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...

Article
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.
Journal Article
2008
Détermination du niveau des prix et finances publiques
REVUE D'ECONOMIE DU DEVELOPPEMENT, September 2008, vol. Vol. 22, n° 3, pp. pp. 115-141 27 p.
Paper presented in a Conference
2008
Développement durable et management stratégique : piloter un processus de transformation de la valeur
in Actes de la 17e Conférence Internationale de Management Stratégique, Association Internationale de Management Stratégique (AIMS), 2008, Nice, France
Research Monograph (Working papers)
2008
Dezentrale Zentralisierung: Rumänien im Zentrum der Wertschöpfung für Renaults Logan
ESCP-EAP Working Paper, no. No. 42, 2008
Paper presented in a Conference
2008
Dialogue social et identité : négociation sociale et identité du négociateur dans le contexte social français
in 'Liens, ruptures, créations : Le sujet face aux contradictions de la société hypermoderne', Actes du 5ème Colloque International de Sociologie Clinique et de Psychologie Sociale Clinique, 2008, Spetses
Chapter
2008
Die Akquisition von Reebok durch Adidas
in Fallstudien zum internationalen Management: Grundlagen - Praxiserfahrung - Perspektiven., Zentes J., Swoboda, B. and Morschett, D. (Eds.) Eds, Gabler, pp. pp. 703-721, 2008
Journal Article
2008
Die Bemessung des Verspätungszuschlags zur Umsatzsteuer
AO-STEUERBERATER, 2008, pp. 166-169
Journal Article
2008
Die BilMoG-Vorschläge zur Bilanzierung von Finanzinstrumenten
KOR: ZEITSCHRIFT FUR INTERNATIONALE UND KAPITALMARKTORIENTIERTE RECHNUNGSLEGUNG, 2008, vol. 8, pp. 1-8 8 S.
Published Case Study
2008
Diluitec
2008, SDA Bocconi School of Management Case, Milano, Italy
Journal Article
2008
Dirigeants: leaders, managers ou simplement exécutants ?
ECHOS (LES), 2008
Paper presented in a Conference
2008
Distance Bounding Protocols for Multiple RFID Tag Authentication
in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Trust, Security and Privacy for Pervasive Applications (TSP '08), IEEE Computer Society, 2008, Shanghai