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Improv Theatre Methods Assist Creativity

Paul Sloane — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:41:56 +0000

I often use improv theatre techniques in my workshops on creativity and innovation. They are little plays in which people have to spontaneously handle unexpected situations in front of an audience. Usually delegates approach these challenges with some caution but after a little training and practice they find them entertaining and liberating. The methods can be amusing icebreakers. But they also serve a deeper and more rewarding purpose – they challenge our assumptions about the unexpected.

Throughout life we learn to treat the unexpected with care. This might be based on something deep within our primitive ancestry. In ancient times something that was unknown or unusual might have been dangerous so the safest option was to view it with caution. Our natural instinct is to repel the outsider, to reject unorthodoxy and to repulse unexpected ideas. Improv challenges all of this. It teaches us to welcome the unknown and to turn it to our advantage. In an improv theatre exercise we learn not to reject or question a crazy notion that is thrown at us but to take it on board, go with the idea, build on it and pass it on.

For example, say you are in a two-man improv interview. The other person may start with a random statement such as, ‘I see your pet gorilla is causing trouble again.’ You could close down the conversation by replying,’ No it isn’t.’ Or, ‘I don’t have a gorilla.’ However you quickly learn that is better to take the idea and build on it by saying something like,’ I know, he drinks too much cider.’ Or, ‘I warned him not to join the Milwall supporters club.’ These kinds of responses give your partner something new and useful to build on. The conversation can then go into all kinds of bizarre and amusing directions.

Some people misunderstand improv. They have seen some programmes on TV where clever comedians use improv to deliver terrific witticisms. It seems that improv is all about being funny. But it is not. Improv is about being spontaneous. It is about being imaginative. It is about taking the unexpected and then doing something unexpected with it. Very often this leads to humour and hilarious situations. But they are by-products. The key thing is being open to crazy ideas and building on them. And funnily enough this is exactly what is needed if we are going to make our enterprises more creative and more agile.

Stodgy, conventional organisations have an atmosphere that instinctively rejects anything counter-cultural. Radical ideas are robustly opposed. People fall into what de Bono calls the intelligence trap; the smarter you are the easier it is to find fault with new ideas. Improv helps expose and rebut this approach.

Truly innovative organisations develop a culture where anybody can challenge anything. New ideas are welcomed. Crazy ideas are not rejected – they are used as starting points for ‘What if?’ discussions that lead to radical new concepts. If you want to change the culture in your business to support rather than reject creativity then improv is a good place to start.

Paul Sloane

Challenge your Thinking by Defining your Ideal Competitor

Paul Sloane — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:31:54 +0000

Try this management exercise. Take your group and divide them into teams of four to six people. The brief is simple. Imagine that an immensely wealthy corporation has decided to enter your business market and plans to create a powerful competitor that will use innovative approaches to seize your customers and wipe you out. It will deliberately exploit your weaknesses to hurt you in the marketplace. This corporation has hired your team to put together the new competitor and given you immense resources. What would you do?

Each team has to brainstorm innovative ways of reaching the customer, delivering better services and seizing a leading market share. They start with a clean slate; with none of the legacies, encumbrances or excuses that are holding you back. They can adopt any technology they want and have virtually unlimited resources. Once the constraints are off it is much easier to conceive of radical, innovative business models.

To take this process to the next stage ask each team to choose a model and then to answer various questions. What does the business model look like? How would they reach clients? What would be their unique sales proposition? What kind of organisation would be best placed to exploit this? And finally, what should we be doing about this?

The teams present back their ideas and the moderator decides on a winner. The emphasis is placed on creative business models, new routes to market and other radical ideas rather than undercutting on price or out-spending on promotions. Obviously many of the ideas generated are ones that your organization should be investigating urgently before a real ‘ideal competitor’ emerges.

Paul Sloane

Three Imminent Innovation Events

Paul Sloane — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:55:04 +0000

There are three upcoming innovation events that you can take advantage of.

1. Gaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation Workshop.

To be held in London on Thursday Sept 16th. This is a one day workshop in which you practise and learn creativity and innovation methods. It will help you to develop new products and services.

2. Innovation Unit Meeting on Open Innovation.

A half day event in London on Tuesday 5th October. The Guest Speaker is David Simoes-Brown of 100% Open. This is an interactive meeting where we review and discuss best practice in Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing.

3. Master Class on Innovation in the Public Sector

This is a one day workshop on Wednesday 13th October in London. It will focus on the leadership, culture and processes for innovation with emphasis on government agencies and the public sector.

I hope to see you at one of these events.

Paul Sloane

Workshop on Open Innovation

Paul Sloane — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:41:46 +0000

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take place on the morning of Tuesday 5th October in central London. It will focus on Open Innovation and it will be interative and instructive. It will be led by David Simoes-Brown of 100% Open, a consultancy that focuses on Open Innovation.

Topics include

Open Innovation Accelerator

Why open innovation can get you better ideas, faster, cheaper
Opportunities in crowdsourcing, corporate collaborations and customer co-innovation
Pitfalls in open innovation and how to avoid them
Collaboration mindsets – how to develop Business Empathy

The meeting is open to BQF members and to non-members. You can see more details and register here. I look forward to meeting you if you come.

Paul Sloane

The ‘Break the Rules’ Exercise

Paul Sloane — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:17:56 +0000

Innovators are rule breakers. We often see how new entrants to a market break the rules to which that the existing players conform. The low cost airlines did this when they challenged the ways in which the major airlines did business. The new players used electronic tickets, bypassed travel agents, did away with allocated seating, flew to new smaller airports and so on.

Break the Rules is a workshop method that I use to challenge the fundamental assumptions of your business. It can be used to illustrate the number and level of restrictions on how you work. It can also be the basis for new ideas.

Divide into teams of 6 to 8 people. Each team must list as many rules as they can think of that apply in the organization. They should spend say 30 minutes capturing as many rules as possible – both obvious explicit rules and the unwritten, implicit rules – ‘the way we do things around here.’ What do you always do? What do you never do? What rules apply to hiring, to firing, to people, to finance, to approvals, to customers, to competitors etc. Typically groups find anywhere from 60 to 100 rules. When you have a long list of rules you then deliberately challenge each of them in turn. For each rule you ask the question – ‘Can we break this rule for the benefit of the business?’ You can use the broken rules as springboards for new ideas.

Say for example you were looking for ways to improve the productivity of a telemarketing department. Here are some of the rules that you might list as applying to the business today:

We use the telephone
We call between 9 a.m. and 12 and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
We are always polite and professional.
We use a script which has been carefully developed to deliver the right messages.
We reward our agents for the number of leads they generate.
We follow-up each appointment with a confirmation letter and information pack.

Now we break the rules:

We will use other methods of contacting people than the telephone
We will contact people outside normal business hours e.g. early in the morning, at lunch time or in the evening.
We will be rude and unprofessional.
We will let our agents say whatever they want.
We will fine our agents for every lead they get.
We will not send out a confirmation by post.

How can any of these ideas help us to make the department more effective? Items 1 to 3 might suggest that we find creative ways to approach our target prospects as they arrive at or leave work. The telemarketing team could dress up as clowns and approach commuters getting off trains with humorous and outrageous messages which solicit responses. Item 4. might prompt us to think of ways in which we could make our message more interesting and less mechanical. The idea of fines might prompt us to emphasize to potential customers the costs and penalties from not responding. Finally item 6 might lead to the ideas of confirming appointments through a special website or hand-delivering to customers a package containing an attractive wall calendar with the date and time of our appointment highlighted.

When I facilitate this exercise in my workshops I often find that teams decide that they can break some 40% to 50% of the rules beneficially. They are surprised at how many self-imposed limits are holding them back.

Paul Sloane

Competitive Advantage through Innovation Workshop

Paul Sloane — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:27:03 +0000

I am running three one-day workshops for BQF entitled Gaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation. These workshops will cover advanced idea generation techniques that really work for new products and services. Delegates will practise and learn practical methods that they can take back and use in their organisations to help improve innovation.

There are details here.

The dates are

London Feb 25 and Sept 16

Midlands June 17

These workshops are open to non-members of the British Quality Foundation. Places are limited so please book early.

Paul Sloane

Innovation Master Class – Sept 15th

Paul Sloane — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:12:48 +0000

I am running a one day Master Class on Innovation for Competitive Advantage for the BQF on Sept 15th in central London. It is guaranteed to give you great techniques for generating innovative ideas. More details here:

Paul Sloane

SCAMPER – a powerful product innovation tool

Paul Sloane — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:03:01 +0000

One of the methods I teach on my Ideas Workshops is SCAMPER. It is a productive and versatile technique for examining a product or service from differing angles and for generating plenty of strongly innovative ideas. SCAMPER is an acronym and you ask the following types of question when you use this tool:

SUBSTITUTE – What elements of this product or service can we substitute?
COMBINE – How can we combine this with other products or services?
ADAPT – What can we alter or adapt it?
MAXIMISE OR MINIMISE – How can we greatly enlarge or greatly reduce any component?
PUT TO OTHER USE – What completely different use can we have for our product?
ELIMINATE – What elements of the product or service can be eliminated?
REARRANGE OR REVERSE – How can we rearrange the product or reverse the process?

Now I have found a site which enhances the tool and offers a range of supplementary resources. Luciano Passuello has posted a blog on SCAMPER together with a SCAMPER random question generator and a SCAMPER mindmap. If you want to use this tool in your next brainstorm meeting then these resources are highly recommended.

Paul Sloane