Hansen admits that he can't point to any specific problem solved by this. Duh.Most dance companies make money by selling tickets to their performances. Boise-based troupe Trey McIntyre Project has a more expansive business model: "We've decided that we have a real asset, which is the creative process itself. We're selling that," says John Michael Schert, the company's co-founder and executive director.
Companies are buying the pitch. Corporate giants such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) and Aetna (AET, Fortune 500) have signed on, and The University of Chicago Booth Business School recently hired Schert for advice on getting inspired....
Lumbering tech giant Hewlett-Packard is a company that desperately needs new ideas. Von Hansen, the company's general manager of future technologies, has been working with TMP almost quarterly since 2008. He says working with the dancers "pulls our staff out of the same way we do things so that we can better design solutions and solve problems."
TMP's dancers show up at HP's headquarters -- sometimes unannounced -- and break into a performance right by employee cubicles. Afterward, the dancers lead employees through a discussion of the creative process and how a dance is created and refined.
When you can't figure out what you are doing wrong, distract attention with something else. Like a Dilbert strip, except real people lost real jobs while HP took itself down the rathole.
UPDATE: See this May 8, 2013 Boise Weekly article about how this was complete fabrication by CNN.
Some good comments on the original story link.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the article has been updated to say that HP never paid for them to come.
How about all the crap HP paid big money for such as bringing in speakers for those all day or multi-day talks or education seminars.
What was that one when Boise was merged with Vancouver called? I've made it a point to forget...
So much of that stuff is just BS created up by management as they compete with each other for their rankings. Unfortunately that sort of thing really infects large companies.
I for one don't miss the office politics or management dog-and-pony shows at all.
At some point they have to get their act together otherwise if the money runs out then---the end.