The Summer School always begins that way : we tell each other how it all started. And somewhere, between different readings of a series of facts, those who are at the helm of this fantastic adventure make sense of why it is, why it has been, and why it will remain in the future.

Though for some the story begins at Francesc Sole Parellada’s 7 Portes around a few bottles of wine, or during a Ph.D. visit in Strasbourg where Pr. Patrick Cohendet welcomed his colleague Jaume Valls, somewhere in the past an impetus to make something happen was given. And from then on, a conference — one of HEC Montreal’s most commented ever in the press — compared two wonderful cities, and decided that they should wed. That two weeks every year, they should bring together the top minds of the two lands and take them on a journey, an intense one, with conferences and visits, workshops, and wine. Lots of wine.

In the same way, “la Mère Poulard” managed to produce the perfect omelette without anyone being able to reproduce her “secrets” for the longest time, the knowledge that falls into most of our daily creations is mostly tacit. We approximate these abilities with narratives. We tell, we invent. Some turn their memories into stories of mythic proportions, just like Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish praised the tales of our fathers, which enchant the world and create justifications for the moments we share, the places we go, and the things we create.

This text is part of a series written in the context of the Fifth edition of the Montreal-Barcelona Summer School on Management of Creativity, organized by Mosaic HEC Montréal and Universitat Barcelona, July 9 to 24, 2013.
Illustration by Studio 923a. Read all posts in the series at blog.fandco.ca/yulbcn.