AEDlab PopUp Copenhagen 2025
AEDlab PopUp Copenhagen 2025
AEDlab was a Popup at the Improbable space in Copenhagen during the 2025 Academy of Management conference. The Improbable space was a three-day popup with a different activation each day. For the AEDlab, we created two art interventions. The first was a "Venn Diagram"--in green masking tape on the floor. First, participants were invited to write on post-it notes and place ideas in the three areas: "I think," "They think," and--in the middle--"We all think." Second, participants were invited to participate in a slightly adapted version of Michael Rohd's "Civic Score #37," a means of collectively choreographing a conversation about politics. Around thirty participants sat in a circle. For an hour and a half, we shared conversation about politics, remarkably uninterrupted by phones or distraction. The Civic Score can be found here in Michael's article for American Theatre, and here in the handout of the event.
Many people participated in the Improbable PopUp. Thanks to Sylvain Bureau, longtime collaborator in art thinking and Improbable Chair at ESCP Paris, Thomas Brigger the COO of Improbable, Improbable faculty Nil Samar, and researcher Noah Bellwald, as well as Michael Rohd for his warm support of our using the civic score.
Colleagues from NYU Matt Statler and Tim Gilman-Ševcík started the event with an informal discussion on heterodox approaches to art-based pedagogies in management education. Seamus Yu Harte from the Stanford D.School did an inspired job creating embodied percussion to guide us in a part of the civic score that involved reading and passing pieces of paper around the circle. Luminaries of the field including Pierre Guillet de Monthoux on the art side and Noomi Weinryb in political science grounded us in theory as well as human connection. Additional thanks to Ellen Oh at Stanford University and the Arts and Culture Grant at the Steinhardt School at NYU which contributed partial travel support to the event.