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 :
13050 publications

Paper presented in a Conference

2007

FESTING, M., B. MÜLLER

Antecedents and Outcomes of Expatriate's Psychological Contracts - Framework and Empirical Results

in Proceedings of the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, 2007, Philadelphia

Research Monograph (Working papers)

2007

PAPE, U., M. SCHLECKER

Are Credit Spreads and Interest Rates Co-integrated? Empirical Analysis in the USD Corporate Bond Market

ESCP-EAP Working Paper, no. May, n°25, 2007

Research Monograph (Working papers)

2007

SCHMID, S., A. DANIEL

Are Subsidiary Roles a Matter of Perception? A Review of the Literature and Avenues for Future Research

ESCP-EAP Working Paper, no. No. 30, 2007

Paper presented in a Conference

2007

MACE, S.

Assessing and Explaining the Impact of 99-Ends on Sales with Store-Level Scanner Data

in Proceedings of the 36th EMAC Conference, 2007, Reykjavik

Journal Article

2007

LEON, E., B. GALAMBAUD

Au coeur de la GRH : la quête de la performance

PERSONNEL, September 2007, vol. n°482, pp. pp 57-58 2 p.

Review of a book; an article; a research

2007

ACQUIER, A., J.-P. GOND

Aux sources de la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise : à la (re)découverte d'un ouvrage fondateur, Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, d'Howard Bowen

2007, FCS REVUE FINANCE CONTROLE STRATEGIE

Chapter

2007

DAMBRIN, C., C. LAMBERT

Beauty Or Not Beauty... Les techniques du souci de soi comme outils de contrôle dans une entreprise cosmétique

in Management et Conduite de Soi : Enquête sur les ascèses de la performance., PEZET E. (ed), Vuibert, 2007

Journal Article

2007

LABEAGA, J. M., N. LADO COUSTE, M. MARTOS

Behavioural loyalty towards store brands

JOURNAL OF RETAILING AND CONSUMER SERVICES, September 2007, pp. pp 347-356 10 p.

Chapter

2007

BADOT, O., B. COVA, A. BUCCI

Beyond Marketing Panaceas: In Praise of Societing

in Critical Marketing : Defining the Field., SAREN M. et alii (eds), Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. pp 85-98 14 p, 2007

Journal Article

2007

VASQUEZ-BRONFMAN, S.

Beyond technocentrism and infocentrism: designing effective e-learning courses for professional education

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTINUING ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, 2007, vol. Vol. 17, n° 6, pp. pp. 406-417 12 p.