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COPYRIGHT 2005 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
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 preparation that are required for effective improvisation. In our theoretical model, we delineate how the improvisational theater principles of "practice," "collaboration," "agree, accept, and add," "be present in the moment," and "draw on reincorporation and ready-mades" can be used to understand what it takes to improvise well in work teams and to create a context favoring these efforts. Our findings support a contingent view of the impact of improvisation on innovative performance. Improvisation is not inherently good or bad; however, improvisation has a positive effect on team innovation when combined with team and contextual moderating factors. We also provide initial evidence suggesting that the improvisational skill can be learned by organizational members through training. Our results shed light on the opportunities provided by training in improvisation and on the challenges of creating behavioral change going beyond the individual to the team and, ultimately, to the organization.
Key words: improvisation; creativity; spontaneity; performance; innovation; strategy; improvisational theater; teams
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The ability to innovate is critical for organizational survival (Amabile 1988). As firms strive for faster cycle times and more innovative solutions, the spontaneous and creative facets of improvisation have been proposed as a pathway to understand and begin acting on what it takes to innovate (Crossan 1997a). In fact, the role of improvisation in innovation processes such as new product development has attracted growing attention (e.g., Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995, Moorman and Miner 1998b, Kamoche and Cunha 2001). Brown and Eisenhardt (1998, p. 33) argue that improvisation "enables managers to continuously and creatively adjust to change and to consistently move products and services out the door," and Poolton and Ismail (2000) identify improvisation as a key area of new development in the innovation field.
In an effort to understand how individuals work together in teams to innovate and adapt in real time, academics have turned to improvisational jazz and theater (e.g., Crossan 1998, Hatch 1998) and asked: If musicians and actors can learn to improvise and to be innovative in real time, can these skills also be learned by work teams in organizations? Despite the considerable attention given to the need for teams to be more nimble and to develop an improvisational capability, little is known about how team members can learn this skill and successfully apply it in organizations. Furthermore, for training in improvisation to be successful, firms need to create a safe context for improvisation to not only happen, but to be effective (Crossan and Sorrenti 1997). Training interventions have been designed for business organizations based on exercises used by actors in the world of improvisational theater (e.g., Crossan 1997b), but limited theoretical work is available on what it takes to develop this skill. Also, there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting the success of any improvisational training effort.
We believe that two common misconceptions about improvisation have hindered managers' understanding of how to develop the improvisational skill in work teams. First, the spontaneous facet of improvisation tends to be overemphasized in the extant literature. When improvisation is restricted to the ability to "think on your feet," managers risk confusing improvisation with random moments of brilliance and conclude that either you have this ability or you do not. There is, however, much preparation and study behind effective improvisation (Weick 1998). Improvisation relies on rules and routines that are preestablished and rehearsed. In improvisation, it is possible to "prepare to be spontaneous" (Barrett 1998, p. 606) and to "rehearse spontaneity" (Mirvis 1998, p. 587). Second, there is a general assumption in much of the literature that improvisation always leads to positive outcomes and better performance. This assumption is reinforced when improvisation is defined as "to cope or ingeniously adapt to a set of circumstances" (Preston 1991, p. 88) or as "devising resourceful solutions to intractable problems" (Meyer 1998, p. 572). When improvisation is positioned as a solution to all organizational problems, managers risk underestimating the need to create a context that supports improvisational processes in work teams. Improvisation is not inherently good or bad (Vera and Crossan 2004). Depending on the skill of the improvisers, improvisation may be highly innovative or chaotic; improvisation may solve a problem or worsen it. Efforts to train teams to improvise need to be based on a realistic understanding of what improvisation is, and what it is not.
The objective of this paper is to clear up the conceptual confusion about improvisation by laying out in detail the various aspects of preparation that are entailed in effective improvisation. We seek to advance understanding of the performance implications of improvisation by unpacking what collective improvisation is (descriptive view) and by examining team and contextual factors that help improvisational processes to be effective and positively impact innovation (prescriptive view). Furthermore, we discuss and test the role of training in enhancing the effectiveness of improvisation.
This paper focuses on collective improvisation occurring in firms, that is, improvisation by work teams. Research on the ability to learn the improvisational skill will not only contribute to the body of knowledge on improvisation, but also inform efforts to enhance training for team innovation. Recent reviews highlight that most innovation research has focused on individual employee innovation, noting the need to understand how teams within organizations can facilitate or inhibit innovation (e.g., Drach-Zahavy and Somech 2001, Caldwell and O'Reilly 2003, Shalley et al. 2004). West (1994) also stresses the importance of training in innovation and states that it is not sufficient to put a team together and expect it to function effectively and to innovate. Understanding what team improvisation entails will shed light on team innovation processes, in which the initiation and implementation phases overlap in time (West 1990). We begin by defining what collective improvisation is, and what it takes to do it well and to innovate. In doing so, we discuss the training effect on improvisation performance. We then describe our methods, site, and results. Finally, we summarize the contributions of this research.
The Skill and Context of Improvisation
Improvisation theory is largely based on insights obtained from jazz and theater improvisation (e.g., Organization Science's Special Issue on Jazz Improvisation, 1998). There have been detailed expositions about the similarities and differences between improvisation in jazz, theater, and other metaphors such as Indian music (see Hatch 1997, Kamoche et al. 2003). Although we build on theory arising from jazz improvisation, we rely more heavily on insights from improvisational theater for its value-added benefits of accessibility, transferability, and universality. The theater metaphor is transparent and accessible because the elements from which actors improvise are the same ones used by teams in their daily work. To understand jazz, we need specialized musical knowledge (e.g., concepts such as head, chords, melody, tones, and tempo), whereas theater improvisation is based on speech, gestures, and movement, which are the materials of everyday interaction (Lawrence 2001). Lessons from theater improvisation are transferable because the raw materials used in theater improvisation are words, posture, facial expressions, and tone of voice (in contrast to the musical notes of jazz improvisation). Therefore, anyone possesses a certain capability to experience and learn from theater improvisation. Furthermore, while jazz is rooted in specific cultural traditions, dramatic expression is a universal and time-less phenomenon. The form of theater may vary across time and culture, but theater always interprets real life. Because the focus of this study is on the ability to learn the improvisation skill, we take advantage of the accessibility and transferability that theater provides to shed new light on the factors that support improvisational actions.
Prior management research has examined the occurrence of improvisation at different levels of analysis. For example, Weick (1993) describes the individual actions of a firefighter improvising to save his life in the Mann Gulch disaster. Teams of individuals also improvise as shown by Hutchins's (1991) description of how the crew of a ship whose navigational system had broken developed new routines in real time and made their way to harbor. In the process, no crew member understood the complete system they improvised, but their collective actions enabled them to achieve their goal. Evidence of team improvisation in the context of the arts, sports, and organizational life has led researchers to conclude that although collective improvisation builds on individual improvisation, team improvisation is more than the sum of individual improvisations because the joint activities of individuals create a collective system of improvisational action (Hatch 1997, Moorman and Miner 1998a, Weick 1998). While team improvisation is clearly a function of the improvisational capability of individuals in the team, team improvisation is also influenced by factors such as team characteristics (e.g., cohesiveness), team dynamics (e.g., communication), and contextual influences stemming from the team and the organization (e.g., culture). Some theorists have characterized organization-level improvisation as large-scale team improvisation (Moorman and Miner 1998a, Cunha et al. 1999), while others build on the view of organizations as cultural entities (Cook and Yanow 1993) and relate organization improvisation to culture and strategy (Crossan 1997a). Our focus is on team-level improvisation as it presents qualities that are distinct from individual improvisation. However, the team level provides an essential building block for organizational improvisation.
Finally, there are different degrees of improvisation (Weick 1998, Zack 2000). Although much has been written about improvisation in crisis situations, where time is an obvious scarce resource and spontaneity is at a premium, improvisation has also been associated with everyday situations of discovery (Crossan et al. 2005). For example, Orlikowski (1996) describes how the everyday improvisations and slippages of customer support specialists adopting a new technology facilitated the slow transformation of their organizational practices. Teams improvise to incremental degrees when they make an adjustment to a standard operating procedure, while radical cases of improvisation have often been associated with crisis events. We examine improvisation as it occurs across the full spectrum of the continuum and do not differentiate between incremental and radical improvisation.
Collective Improvisation as "Making Do" and "Letting Go"
In the context of theater, Halpern et al. (1994, pp. 13-14) argue that "true improvisation is getting on-stage and performing without any preparation or planning," and that "improvisation is making it up as you go along." Frost and Yarrow (1990, p. 2) describe the essence of improvisation in drama:
Improvisation may be close to pure "creativity"--or perhaps more accurately to creative organization, the way in which we respond to and give shape to our world. The process is the same whenever we make a new arrangement of the information we have, and produce a recipe, a theory, or a poem. The difference with doing it a l'improviste, or all'improvviso, is that the attention is focused on the precise moment when things take shape.
Seham (2001) effectively captures the many definitions of theater improvisation when she states that improvisation is a mixture of "making do" and "letting go." In applying theater or jazz improvisation to organizations, theorists have suggested a variety of definitions and dimensions (e.g., Preston 1991, Crossan and Sorrenti 1997, Hatch 1997, Moorman and Miner 1998a, Weick 1998, Cunha et al. 1999). For example, improvisation has been defined as "intuition guiding action in a spontaneous way" (Crossan and Sorrenti 1997, p. 156), "the degree to which composition and execution converge in time" (Moorman and Miner 1998a, p. 698), and "the conception of action as it unfolds ... drawing on available material, cognitive, affective, and social resources" (Cunha et al. 1999, p. 302). Many definitions tend to blend prescriptive and descriptive elements, largely because management theorists have borrowed so heavily from descriptions of improvisation in the arts in which "effectiveness" and "quality of performance" have been embedded in the phenomenon. We extract the descriptive elements of spontaneity and creativity, defining improvisation occurring in teams as the creative and spontaneous process of trying to achieve an objective in a new way. As a spontaneous process, improvisation is extemporaneous. In fact, Weick (1998, p. 552) suggests that "to do things spontaneously is to become more skilled at thinking on your feet." The spontaneous--"letting go"--dimension incorporates a time orientation to the improvisation construct; individuals respond to situations on the spur of the moment, reacting in the moment rather than anticipating, or composing while executing (Moorman and Miner 1998b). In addition, the creative--"making do"--dimension incorporates the search for novelty and usefulness in improvisational actions, but acknowledges that a creative process does not always lead to creative outcomes (Drazin et al. 1999, Gilson and Shalley 2004). By defining improvisation as a creative process, the focus is not on the creative outcome that is novel and useful but on how teams "attempt to orient themselves to, and take creative action in, situations or events that are complex, ambiguous, and ill defined" (Drazin et al. 1999, p. 287). Finally, our definition also highlights improvisation as a conscious choice people make rather than as random behavior. The decision to improvise may be made on the spot or may be an option considered in advance, as when firms have formal or informal norms enabling people to depart from routines at certain times to come up with something new. Intentional improvisation can be observed, for example, in a research and development (R & D) team improvising to prototype a new product on time. In this case, team members knowingly decide to engage in an extemporaneous process and try to achieve an objective in a new way--new, at least, to them.
By focusing on the creative process and not on the creative outcome, an advantage of our definition of improvisation is that it does not make any judgment about the performance implications of improvisational processes. Miner et al. (2001) differentiate improvisation from creativity and innovation by arguing that creativity may involve absolutely no improvisation and that innovation may be created through improvisation, but also through planning. It is the spontaneity and real-time nature of the action that differentiates creativity and innovation from improvisation. Furthermore, innovation is output oriented and defined as "the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization" (Amabile 1996, p. 1). Given the process orientation of our improvisation construct, the basic premise of our theory is that improvisation per se is not associated with innovative outcomes. Consequently, we do not hypothesize a main effect between improvisation and innovation. Rather, there are several dimensions that impact the effectiveness of improvisation and its link to innovative outcomes.
Team Skills for Effective Improvisation
Experienced actors make improvisation look easy and natural. However, many hours of practice and a repertoire of rules help improvisers to focus on the process of creation without becoming overwhelmed by the pressure of extemporaneous performance (Lawrence 2001). In fact, much discipline and practice stand behind a successful theater performance. As Halpern et al. (1994, p. 34) argue, "Anyone can improvise, but like any game, if the players don't learn and obey the rules, no one will play with them." Improvisation is in essence unpredictable, but that does not mean that it is without considerable human infrastructure; practice, expertise, and knowledge of the rules of collaboration enable team members, both in theater and in firms, to influence the quality of their improvisational processes. The following sections present the key dimensions of effective improvisation that lead to innovation.
Expertise. In improvisational theater, actors know in advance that when the time of the performance arrives, they will improvise. Consequently, actors "plan to improvise" and continuously work on improving their improvisational ability. Weick (1998) worries that, because of the emphasis on spontaneity, researchers may overlook the major investment in practice and study that...
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