B-Schools Discover the Benefits of Improv
UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Columbia Business School have all offered courses on improvisation and its application to the world of business, the Financial Times reported today.
Professors are convinced that the basic elements of improv– knowing your audience, acknowledging negative feedback, acting fast on your feet, being likeable and leaving your audience wanting more–also have resonance in the corporate boardroom, Christopher Mason writes.
“It really is a systemic response on our part to realize that what we had been doing 10 years ago, while maybe providing great technical training, was just not enough to prepare leaders and strategists for the problems they were solving,” comments Paul Ingram, a professor of business at Columbia and faculty director of the Columbia Senior Executive Program.
For more on the link between improvisation and business, check out Mason’s article, or this Stacy Blackman entry on bringing art into the MBA.
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