The world of art is a lucrative, booming industry, with the global market projected to reach $944.39 billion by 2033. Only recently, a 1940 self-portrait by renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
Despite the financial strength of the industry, pursuing a career in art is not a typical path for business school graduates. However, recognizing the power and potential of art as a business, Didier Schwarz, a graduate of the Master's in Information Systems program at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne, chose to defy convention and carve out his niche in the art world.
In 2023, he co-founded Iori Ottmann, a creative artistic production studio that transforms public spaces into sensory shared experiences.
Here, he shares how the technical and soft skills he gained during his studies empowered him to create encounters where creativity and technology converge in unexpected ways.
Tell us about your business
Iori Ottmann is an artistic creation and production studio. We design interactive, evolving installations that transform public spaces, placing people, art, and place at the heart of every project.
We are currently developing two major artistic concepts. The first explores adaptability through a modular structure created with internationally renowned architect Shigeru Ban. This traveling installation will journey along rivers—starting with the Rhône—and will host artists, engineers, and scientists at each stop to create original works. The goal is to question our relationship with water, time, and our capacity to adapt to environmental change.
The second project examines the notion of passage—like the fleeting moments we experience in a street, an airport, or in front of a landmark. It takes the form of a large interactive digital mirror equipped with AI that transforms, in real time, our perception of ourselves and the surrounding space, creating dreamlike and surreal universes.
We see our works as analytical instruments that help us understand our relationship with places and with others. That’s why they are designed to be nomadic: they travel, adapt, and resonate differently in each new environment.
Driven by shared curiosity, we collectively create living experiences—works in motion searching for truth.
What inspired you to start Iori Ottmann?
In 2018, I traveled to Japan for the first time with an architect friend. One of our stops was the island of Naoshima, almost entirely dedicated to art.
We spent three nights there, mainly to visit the Chichu Art Museum, designed by renowned architect Tadao Ando. What makes this place unique is its construction and curation process. Typically, a museum is built first, and exhibitions change over time. At Naoshima, the artworks were selected first, and the space was designed around them, with most pieces meant to remain permanently.
The connection between the nature of the place, the architecture, and the artworks creates a powerful, deeply sensory experience.
The emotion I felt there has never left me. It’s what inspired me and pushed me to create Studio Iori Ottmann. This tight bond between artwork, space, and place has become one of our studio’s founding principles.
In what ways do you draw upon the skill set you developed at b-school?
I remember my first day of my Bachelor’s when a professor said: “You’re not here to learn, you’re here to unlearn.” Conceptually, this is one of the most important skills for both entrepreneurs and artists.
More practically, HEC Lausanne gave me the tools to take an idea and turn it into a concrete project. That includes learning how to collaborate, structure ideas, test them, develop them, and communicate them—whether to new collaborators, partners, investors, or clients.
On the administrative side, it means understanding budgets, accounting, and legal aspects—being a strong generalist able to oversee all the activities needed for a business to function.
My Master’s in Information Systems also gave me the skills to structure our studio around data. We digitalize all our processes—from artistic research to concept development—which helps us capture the value we create and optimize our work. These skills also shape our artistic concepts, where technology plays a central role.
Tell us about your typical working day
My role largely involves prospecting and selling our installations, recruiting talent with our artistic director, coordinating project stakeholders, and ensuring deadlines and budgets are met.
Day-to-day, that means developing and executing sales, marketing, and communication strategies; contacting and meeting cultural institutions, cities, or private companies; and coordinating with the team. Every day is different, but it always balances artistic vision with operational reality.
How has your b-school network helped you develop Iori Ottmann?
My network is more active in entrepreneurship than in the art world, so it’s not always a direct lever for developing the studio.
However, it has helped in several ways. I’ve met influential people who support us during this commercialization phase, especially in the corporate sector. I can also share challenges with fellow entrepreneurs—they understand the realities of building a business, even if our sectors differ. And this community has opened doors indirectly through connections that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
What have been some of the biggest obstacles you’ve encountered?
One major challenge has been reconciling an entrepreneurial approach—usually focused on solving a problem, selling a solution, and moving quickly—with a collective artistic approach.
Art requires experimenting, exploring, and making mistakes to find the essence of what we want to express. This process requires patience and time—often at odds with investors' expectations.
Despite this, we convinced private investors to believe in our vision and give us the time needed for exploration and experimentation so we could collectively define our identity and aspirations.
Where would you like Iori Ottmann to be in five years’ time?
In five years, I would like Iori Ottmann to be a reference studio for artistic installations in public spaces, with several traveling works in different parts of the world. I hope we will have created around a dozen major installations—each one nourishing the next—and that we continue to surprise the public. Ultimately, I want passersby, wherever we exhibit, to feel the same emotion I experienced in Naoshima: the sense of being transported and transformed by a place.
What is one surprising thing you’ve learned from starting your venture?
I’ve had the chance to work with talented artists like Mathieu Bernard-Reymond and Sissel Tolaas and to collaborate with one of the greatest architects of our time, Shigeru Ban.
What they taught me is that the creative process resembles the work of a scientist—or even an entrepreneur—much more than people think. Creating is serious work. You need convictions, constraints, experimentation, courage, and trust in the process more than the outcome.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own business?
It may sound cliché, but it’s true: find people who complement you and whose skills, expertise, and networks support the first stages of the project.
In my case, coming from the startup world, I needed to surround myself with artists who understood the creative process. That complementarity was essential.
And on the human side, align on the sacrifices required, the resilience needed, and the support you will give each other—not when things are going well, but in decisive moments.
Because those moments always come, and that’s when everything is at stake. In my opinion, that makes all the difference.