About John Sweeney
As the owner and director of America’s oldest comedy theater, John has honed his powers of improvisation to ignite cultures of innovative behavior within America’s biggest businesses including Microsoft, PWC, General Mills & United Health Care – resulting in more than 2500 events to date. He is the author of several books, including The Innovative Mindset, coming from Wiley on Oct. 26, 2015.
Featured across countless media platforms including Forbes, Inc. and The Financial Times, he uses his scientific understanding of how human behavior is influenced, to implement simple but groundbreaking tools such as “Yes and…” and “The Big 5” so you too can be at peak innovation fitness.
But the driving force behind Sweeney’s success are the results he helps clients achieve by effectively bridging improvisational theater skills and behaviors to the workplace through his speeches and training. His improvisational insights have resonated with a broad spectrum of forward-thinking business leaders from some of the most innovative and largest companies in the world – ensuring every level of the organization is operating within the mindset of discovery.
Why Sweeney?
With over 20 years experience and 2500 successful events worldwide, it’s John’s unrivalled level of experience mixed with his fresh and practical approach to innovation fitness that ensure he will deliver the results you are looking for time and time again.
Not only this, but he doesn’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach to his keynote and workshops which means customization is key. John Sweeney and his team work closely with clients to customize speeches and training for particular audiences and business needs. John is most well-known for his speeches on the behaviors and insights of improvisational innovation. For more than a decade, his clients have asked him to adapt his innovation speech to the specific disciplines of personal and cultural innovation, sales, storytelling/presentation, customer service, leadership, idea generation, agility/change management and collaboration.
Why What We Do Works!
John’s methods have been honed and perfected as a result of over 20 years in the improvisation space – he has seen first-hand, and implemented himself, the practices that allow people to move from a mindset of fear, to a mindset of discovery.
Improvisation is the perfect vehicle to work on one’s mindset, because it breaks down complex social interactions, team dynamics and cultural norms to the very basics of humanness and how we collaborate, communicate and create.
It is in a way a lab in which we can help people set aside their every-day fears of making a mistake, looking smart or making an impression by creating an environment, in which the rules of interaction are centered around acceptance, openness, recognition, authenticity and laughter – resulting in a hot bed of new behaviors and ideas.
This innovative approach to… well… innovation actually has a foundation in science! You can read all about how and why right here.