Increasing Innovation with Improv Comedy – Reverse the Creative Process

Being effective at improvisation isn’t just about accessing creativity. It’s also very much about applying a different creative process than most people are used to.

Here is an improv comedy game that demonstrates this idea (I’ll explain how below):

The standard creative process seems to be to start with a problem and then “think” of creative ideas that seem to “fit.”

There are two problems with this approach:

1. By thinking, you cut off yourself off from your creative flow (where your real power is)
2. By limiting yourself to ideas that “fit,” you cut yourself off from new and innovative ideas.

To get past this, we need to reverse the standard creative process.

Rather than thinking of ideas that fit, you let random, creative ideas flow and then work to make them fit.

The Blind Line improv game video clip above demonstrates this. Make sure you watch it before continuing reading.

How “Blind Line” Can Help You Innovate

Those cards were supplied by the audience, I did not look at them in advance, and I shuffled them up to keep it completely random. Because of this, 99% of the time the lines from the cards are completely unrelated to whatever I was saying before.

What makes the game work is when the performer can take a random, unrelated sentence and somehow tie it to their original point (or use it as a launching point for a new point).

You can use this same approach in your innovation efforts. Rather than taking a piecemeal approach, trying to brainstorm good ideas that fit in with your current plans, try reversing the process and letting yourself (and your team) flow and then connecting those ideas to your strategic objectives.

This will result in a lot of nonsense and a lot of bad ideas. That’s ok! You only need one good idea to act on.

Here are three tips to make this process even more effective:

1. Set ground rules – If doing this with a team, let them know, “we may not act n any of these ideas!” This gives you a certain amount of leeway to let people go down a crazy path without committing to implementing their ideas. Be careful with this one, because if you repeatedly get people together to brainstorm and never do anything different, they will get resentful.
2. Build and explore – Use the random ideas to drive new ideas. Instead of evaluating each idea as soon as it comes up, use the idea as a springboard for the next one.
3. Reconnect ideas – The key skill in improv is to reconnect your crazy ideas to the original thread. This is how you can simultaneously be creative and cohesive (Can you see examples of this in the Bind Line video?). In the same way, shift your focus to how you can connect these crazy ideas to your strategic objectives. The difference is in switching from “this has nothing to do with our objectives,” to “how can this connect to our objectives?” Simple shift, but very powerful.

This process will seem strange at first, but you should take that as a good sign – strange means you are out of your comfort zone, and that’s where your best innovation will come from!

Would you like to bring the same humor, energy, and message to your conference or meeting? Then check out Avish’s Keynote Experience’s page and contact him now to lock in your date!

And for more ideas on Innovation, check out Avish’s Free E-Book: “Leading Innovation – How to Get Your Team, Department, and Organization to Stop Whining About Change and Start Embracing Innovation!”