Member - Ted Buswick

Oral Historian and Archivist
Boston Consulting Group 

Executive-in-Residence for Leadership and the Arts,
Graduate School of Management,
Clark University,
Worcester, MA  USA

Back in the 1970s when I was earning Masters degrees in English and Arts Administration, I was exploring the arts through its multidisciplinary relationships, especially brain research.  It’s been a delight to return to such multidisciplinary studies in the past ten years through my work with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and, more recently, Clark University.  I joined BCG in Boston in November 1992, and, after many writing and editing positions, am currently our oral historian and archivist.  Within BCG’s Strategy Institute, I designed and manage a six-year Institute project relating the reading of poetry to strategic thinking.  This will result in a book early next year, What Poetry Brings to Business, published by the University of Michigan Press, by Clare Morgan, with Kirsten Lange and Ted Buswick.

Before joining BCG, I was a senior acquisitions editor for Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, director of product development for the American Management Association, and a high school teacher of English and theatre (and for brief times I sold computers, did some ghost writing, and was a consultant).  If I were doing what I’m academically prepared for, I’d be running a K-12 arts program or still teaching English and theatre.  If I were doing what I love most, I’d be directing theatre full time.

In 2005 I was guest editor (with Harvey Seifter) for a special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy on arts-based learning in business. 

http://shop.emeraldinsight.com/product_info.htm/products_id/326

With Alastair Creamer, then of Unilever in the UK, and Mary Pinard of Babson College I wrote “(Re)Educating for Leadership: How the Arts Can Improve Business.” The article is also available on the Web sites of the Arts & Business Council of Americans for the Arts in the U.S. and Arts and Business and Creamer & Lloyd in the UK. Also attached is “Poetry in the Boardroom: Thinking Beyond the Facts,” published in the Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2005.  This is a roundtable discussion among the journal editor, Clare Morgan of Oxford University; Kirsten Lange, a BCG vice president; and me.  This roundtable discusses our work on poetry and business.  Harvey and I are currently completing a second special issue for the Journal of Business Strategy.