To provide a metaphorical language, a contextual framework, and a specific set of social behaviors to help business executives and managers envision, discuss and implement changes to encourage flexibility and creative freedom and allow the immediate absorption and rapid integration of new and different ideas.
The paper combines experiential and theoretical knowledge in innovation, change management, and strategy formation. It uses existing research and case studies in which the concept of jazz as a model for organizational improvisation is applied through organizational interventions. The scope of the paper ranges from theoretical argument and description of new idea processes, to multiple industry examples of innovative companies, to specific case studies.
Applications of the concepts were effective in giving people a way to understand the flexibility and creativity needed to improvise within the structured environments of most corporate cultures. Through the use of live music, experiential exercises in enhanced listening skills, spontaneous rotation between leading and supporting roles, and the use of collaborative creative thinking in solving real‐time problems, corporate cultures were able to understand new ways of collaborating and adapting to change through organized improvisation.
Experiential evidence suggests that teaching organizations to improvise is a catalyst for positive change. Using the model of the jazz ensemble in conjunction with specific cooperative behaviors as a tool to teach organizational improvisation is highly effective when integrated with a well conceived strategy vision and a passionate belief in its potential and a commitment to bringing it to a business reality.
