Improvisation, Innovation, Leadership: A Conversation
On Friday, April 18, 2008, the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Columbia Business School will present “The Conversations Series: Improvisation, Innovation, Leadership,” featuring four leading experts in the field of business, in an examination of the possibilities that the study of improvisation can provide for forging new models of organization and leadership. The panelists are R. Keith Sawyer (Washington University), who will be available to sign copies of his recent book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (Basic Books, 2007); Flores A. Forbes, urban developer and veteran of the social justice movement, which he chronicles in his 2006 memoir, Will You Die With Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party (Atria/Simon and Schuster); Sheena S. Iyengar (Columbia Business School), an expert on the psychology of choice; and Damon J. Phillips (University of Chicago Graduate School of Business), an expert on labor markets and entrepreneurship who incorporates histories of the jazz industry in his analyses.
The panel will be moderated by Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor of Business, Columbia Business School.
Friday, April 18, 2008, 7:30 pm
Lecture Hall, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
2950 Broadway (at 116th Street)
Reception to follow, at which Dr. Sawyer will be available to sign copies of his latest book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.
The Conversations Series at the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, with support from the Ford Foundation, aims to explore the role of improvisation in the widest array of fields and practices, in a format designed to be as intimate and inviting as possible. The guiding premise of the series is that the study of improvisation can present not only a new animating paradigm for scholarly inquiry in the humanities, the arts, and the social, political, and even natural sciences, but also a set of trenchant models for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action that can foster community building across national and cultural boundaries. These discussions encourage an interdisciplinary expansion of the intellectual conversation surrounding jazz, and especially its lifeblood practice, improvisation, as a means toward developing new knowledge that illuminates the human condition.
