Grey Sky Thinking

Abstract

The Institute for Experiments with Business (IBEX) takes the stuff of business, trade and administration as a place for play and experimentation. Amid the turbulence of late-stage capitalism, can we imagine business as kind of exoskeleton, in which to navigate the uncertain forcefields we hazily call “the economy”? What if we move the backstage roles of management and maintenance to centre stage? We experiment with such questions in practice. Online shops and ticketing systems are our mise-en-scène, corporate forms and funding applications our (p)rehearsal spaces. Adminstrators are our avatars, wielding budgets, contracts and funding applications as  performative instruments. In IBEX, business becomes a site for critical experimentation, improvisation and enactment, to break out of the routines of business-as-usual and embody possible futures in the present. We exchange Blue Sky innovation for Grey Sky thinking: overcasting before forecasting.