
Second Science Project Chicago Booth
In a groundbreaking partnership for the Center for Decision Research and Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with The Second City, the Second Science Project (SSP) intersects behavioral science with improvisational practice to cultivate the behavioral insights and interpersonal skills needed in today’s workplace.
Overview
This new collaboration does not take improvisation as a form of entertainment, but rather as a feature of daily life—something people must do every time they find themselves in a situation they didn’t completely foresee, whether in the context of adjusting to new coworkers, responding to unforeseen defiance, or changing a team’s old strategy. Inspired by over a century of behavioral research as well as decades of experiential expertise accumulated at The Second City, this new evidence-driven collaboration seeks to help people not only understand but practice adapting their own behavior to accommodate how people improvise their everyday responses to the world.
Pioneering Research
This collaboration aims to produce and publish rigorous, cutting-edge, high-impact research. Work supported by this collaboration will pertain to the wide range of behavioral science phenomena relevant to the types of judgment, decision-making, and behavior that are relevant in improvisational contexts. These include honesty, empathy, group relations, motivation, communication, cooperation, goals, perception, self-regulation, diversity, inclusion, and coordination.
Education Programs
Defining a new generation of learning experiences, SSP workshops bring the Leadership in Practice approach vividly to life: Each workshop takes participants to the step beyond gaining behavioral insights, bringing out their ability to improvise in translating those insights into action. Grounded in over a century of behavioral science and The Second City’s renowned “Yes, And” philosophy, each workshop utilizes enriched improvisational exercises to help participants identify, analyze, and better adapt their individual approaches to the interpersonal demands of their work.
The power of the SSP workshops arises in the blending of scientific insight and skilled practice through newly designed improvisational exercises, offering participants an innovative way to both learn and act. Amplifying the strengths for which each institution is known around the world, each experiential session is infused with cutting-edge behavioral science from fields such as economics, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as with scientifically informed improvisational practice from the institution that has produced icons such as Bill Murray, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert.
With the societal landscape becoming ever more dynamic and variable over time, these workshops promise neither a cure-all nor a superficial five-point plan for success. Taking an unabashedly realistic approach to the development of people skills, the sessions simply help participants to practice—with potent understanding of common human tendencies—the small improvements they can make to more successfully improvise their way through each day. With the courage to move one step at a time, the workshops promote reliable development of the inclusive interpersonal skills, such as engagement, listening, reflection, and collaboration, all of which have become vital.
Some of Our Current Offerings Include: