Why Hewlett-Packard is Hiring Dancers

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 and Aetna have signed on, and The University of Chicago Booth Business School recently hired Schert for advice on getting inspired.

“Artists live the whole process of inspiration. We decided to refine it as a tool,” says Schert, a former dancer himself. “We want companies to understand what they are creating, whether it is a marketing strategy or a healthcare policy, and get them to think about where they get hung up, and how to find ways around those stopping points to come up with new ideas.”

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.