Improvisation and Innovative Performance in Teams

This paper builds on the principles and insights from improvisational theater to unpack the nature of collective improvisation and to consider what it takes to do it well and to innovate. Furthermore, we discuss the role of training in enhancing the incidence and effectiveness of improvisation. We propose that two common misconceptions about improvisation have hindered managers’ understanding of how to develop the improvisational skill. First, the spontaneous facet of improvisation tends to be overemphasized, and second, there is a general assumption that improvisation always leads to positive performance. Our goal is to clear up the conceptual confusion about improvisation by laying out the various aspects of…