Simon Denny’s Art Approach to Business Creation

Business students from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, United States, aren’t consulting with a top business executive; they’re consulting with New Zealand-born contemporary artist Simon Denny.

Denny recently worked with Case Western Reserve and Cleveland Institute of Art students at a creative space thinkbox to talk about business creation from a different perspective.

Denny uses board games and other tools to help students understand business sectors such as health care, transportation and finance.

“Because an artist is often acting as an entrepreneur as well, they’re their own business and they have to kind of market and communicate themselves, and they have to process and kind of like reflect information in a current way that really communicates to people,” Denny says.

“I think all of those skills are very, very applicable within particularly young tech businesses.”

Denny emphasises tech’s growing outreach to all industries and how creativity reaches into even traditional manufacturing settings.

The workshop was a precursor to Denny’s exhibition “The Founder’s Paradox,” which opens in February 2018 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. “The Founder’s Paradox” runs until 10 June.

Denny, who was born in 1982, represented New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Original article by Kellie Nock, WKSU, November 1, 2017.

Photo by Simon Denny.