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Improv Comedy and Modern Marketing Education: Exploring Consequences for Divergent Thinking, Self-Efficacy, and Collaboration
Abstract
In an era of constant connectedness—from Twitter tweets to the 24-hour news cycle—the need for marketers to be nimble and responsive to the needs of consumers and ever-evolving markets is greater than ever before. Indeed, being able to be “in the moment” and to react instantaneously demands a different kind of training and education than the slower paced, carefully constructed, and casually timed marketing campaigns of yesterday. Improvisational comedy and its tenets—agreement (“Yes, and.. ”); be you (and know that you are enough); make bold, unexpected choices—require a comparable, in-the-moment mind-set that encourages group collaboration, positive self-efficacy, and the ability to generate creative ideas without hesitation. Two studies show that improvisational training has positive consequences for group collaboration, self-efficacy, and divergent thinking, skills essential for modern marketing roles. First, an exploratory study of the general population reveals preliminary links between improvisation familiarity and the aforementioned marketing skills, as well as between a brief improv manipulation and divergent thinking. Second, a follow-up study using actual students in a 10-week improvisation course confirms causal relationships between long-term improv training and group collaboration, self-efficacy, and divergent thinking. Effect sizes are large and endure even 4 months following the improv training.
... For example, business schools utilize theatre improvisation to build community and encourage risk-taking 5 as well as enhance self-efficacy and group collaboration. 2 Graduate schools use improvisation to improve the ability of PhD students to communicate their research to those outside of their scientific disciplines. 6 A number of healthcare professional programs have also embraced theatre improvisation. ...
... Other assessments include a study of undergraduates who had participated in a 10-week improvisation course as compared to those enrolled in a 10-week consumer behavior course. 2 Here, students with improvisation training were found to score higher in tasks requiring divergent thinking and reported improved perceptions about group collaboration. Similarly, graduate-level nutrition and dietetic students who experienced medical improvisation via its incorporation into traditional coursework reported an increase in their self-reported skills in collaboration and flexibility as well as increases in their self-confidence. ...
... Findings from our second study reinforced previous observations that participating in theatre improvisation enhances learners' self-confidence and oral communication skills 6 as well as their ability to think creatively. 2 An important aspect of the second study was the incorporation of a debriefing session, which allowed participants to reflect upon and share their experiences. Here, participants observed that they enjoyed contributing to a group, experienced an increased comfort level in ambiguous situations, felt more present in the moment and expressed interest in sharing their experience with others. ...
Objective
To evaluate the relationship between training in theatre improvisation and empathy, communication, and other professional skills.
Methods
Undergraduate and graduate students who were participants of a 10-week summer undergraduate research program engaged in theatre improvisation techniques during a 3-hour workshop. In Study #1, a de-identified, self-report questionnaire (known as the Empathy Quotient) was administered prior to and following the workshop. Paired sample 2-tailed t-tests were performed to evaluate pre- and post-test scores. To identify additional benefits of engaging in theatre improvisation techniques, Study #2 was performed. Here, a survey was administered to the participants following their completion of the workshop to assess the impact on their personal growth and professional skills. An additional survey was administered at the end of the 10-week program to evaluate all program activities.
Results
Study #1. Paired t-test analyses indicated that pre-test versus post-test Empathy Quotient scores were not significantly different, implying that participation in the theatre improvisation workshop did not impact empathy. Study #2. Survey results indicate that participation in the theatre improvisation workshop encouraged feelings of support by peers and creative thinking as well as increasing communication skills.
Conclusion
Incorporating a theatre improvisation workshop into educational programs for pre-medical and pre-biomedical students is of value for enhancing self-confidence, oral communication skills and ability to think creatively.
... Alongside individual creativity, co-creativity has been studied within contexts such as teaching (Drinko, 2018;Sawyer, 2003Sawyer, , 2004Sawyer, , 2011Sawyer, , 2012Shem-Tov, 2015;West et al., 2017) and organisational creativity (Gerber, 2009;Hodge & Ratten, 2015;Ratten & Hodge, 2016;Vera & Crossan, 2004. Furthermore, fields such as medical education (Gao et al., 2018;Hoffmann-Longtin et al., 2018), marketing skills (Mourey, 2020), clinical social work and psychotherapy (Romanelli et al., 2017;Romanelli & Tishby, 2019) and humanitarian aid (Tint et al., 2015) have all benefited from improvisation interventions. ...
This article presents a novel, biological layer of knowledge on the impact of improvisation training. We summarise a theoretical construct of improvisation and empirical research on the effects of improvisation training on brain and bodily processes. The findings indicate that improvisation training can mitigate acute social stress and enhance interpersonal confidence, particularly amongst less confident individuals. Regardless of the fictionality of the improvisational context, genuine emotions and experiences comparable to real-world contexts emerged as measured through psychophysiological reactivity. This article provides theoretical and empirical support for using improvisation and various forms of applied theatre as a conceptual and embodied analogy for everyday encounters serving educational purposes.
... When exploration is not a central component of the learning process (such as copying repetitive dance routine, as in Sowden et al., 2015), intrinsic motivation to learn would not be a reliable predictor of improvement in divergent thinking abilities. In contrast, when exploration is part of the learning process (such as in improvisation sessions; see e.g., Hainselin et al., 2018;Mourey, 2020;Sowden et al., 2015), intrinsic motivation to learn trough exploration would reliably predict improvement in divergent thinking. In the academic context, students who attend school for the pleasure of accomplishment and learning may have come to appreciate and value tasks that require a limited amount of exploration. ...
Despite the key role that motivation plays in the creative process-with respect to engaging with content, exploring, and learning-, surprisingly few studies have investigated the relationship between academic motivation and indicators of creativity. The objective of the current study was to clarify this relationship. More specifically, we examined the role of openness to experience and academic motivation in relation to subjective and objective indicators of creative abilities. We hypothesized that openness to experience would predict greater intrinsic academic motivation, which in turn would predict better divergent thinking abilities and self-ratings in academic activities. Regression and mediation analyses with a sample of 279 college students supported the hypothesis that openness to experience was positively associated with intrinsic academic motivation. In turn, intrinsic academic motivation was related to higher creative self-ratings in academically related activities, but not to better divergent thinking abilities. Additionally, controlled academic motivation was associated with poorer divergent thinking abilities. We discuss the place of creative abilities in education and the distinction between a motivation to explore and a motivation to learn within the academic context. Educational relevance statement: This paper examined the role of openness to experience and academic motivation toward the creative abilities of a population of university students. The results suggested that students with greater motivation to learn in school had no better creative abilities, as measured with divergent thinking tasks, but perceived themselves as more creative in academically related activities. This study has implications for the relationship between motivation and creative abilities in education.
... Alongside individual creativity, co-creativity has been studied within contexts such as teaching (Drinko, 2018;Sawyer, 2003Sawyer, , 2004Sawyer, , 2011Sawyer, , 2012West et al., 2017) and organisational creativity (Gerber, 2009;Hodge & Ratten, 2015;Ratten & Hodge, 2016;Vera & Crossan, 2004. Furthermore, fields such as medical education (Gao et al., 2018;Hoffmann-Longtin et al., 2018), marketing skills (Mourey, 2020), clinical social work and psychotherapy (Romanelli et al., 2017;Romanelli & Tishby, 2019) and humanitarian aid (B. S. Tint et al., 2015) have all benefited from improvisation interventions. ...
Improvisation is commonly understood as a performance or creating something without preparation. As an art form, improvised theatrical plays are created spontaneously on stage without a script. As an applied form of theatre, improvisation has been utilised in fields requiring collaboration and a tolerance for uncertainty, such as in the business and education sectors. This dissertation contributes to the literature in educational research by investigating applied improvisation as a tool to promote student teachers’ interpersonal competence. Applied improvisation enables individuals to explore and practise teaching-related encounters in a fictional and psychologically safe context. Psychological safety is particularly important when practising challenging interactions. Despite the fictionality of the context, bodily experiences during improvisations may promote experiential learning.
The research summarised in this dissertation was guided by two primary research questions. First, I asked whether improvisation training influenced student teachers’ interpersonal competence and social stress. Student teachers (n = 19) participated in a 7-week (17.5-h) improvisation intervention, comprising the fundamentals of theatre improvisation and status expression (verbal and nonverbal behaviours indicating the social dominance of a person). The impact of the intervention was measured using subjective self-reports (interpersonal confidence, i.e., belief regarding one’s capability related to effective social interactions, self-esteem and experienced stress) and a large array of physiological measurements (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance, facial muscle activity, frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha asymmetry and stress hormone cortisol). Self-reports, physiological measurements and Trier Social Stress Tests (TSST; including public speaking) were performed before and after the improvisation intervention. An improvisation course was arranged for the control group (n = 20) following the intervention study. One year later, the long-term effects of improvisation training on self-reported interpersonal confidence were measured in a follow-up study.
Second, I asked how real versus fictional social rejections impact experienced stress and psychophysiological responses. Student teachers (n = 39) participated in an experiment including both real (interview) and fictional (improvisation exercises) dyadic interactions. In the real condition, student teachers were unaware that the interviewer was an actor trained to include subtle social rejections during the interview by using three types of social rejections: devaluing, interrupting and nonverbal rejections. In the fictional condition, student teachers were informed in advance which social rejection type would be used during a later improvisation exercise. Experienced stress and psychophysiological reactivity during social rejections were measured under both experimental conditions.
Following an improvisation intervention, interpersonal confidence and its components of performance confidence and a tolerance for failure increased relative to controls, whilst one year later the improved performance confidence persisted. Furthermore, a heterogeneous treatment effect was found. Those with the lowest pretest interpersonal confidence score benefited most from the improvisation intervention. No between-group differences in self-esteem were observed. Psychological and physiological indications of relief from performance-related stress were also observed following improvisation training. In addition, interpersonal confidence moderated self-reported and cardiovascular stress responses. Thus, interpersonal confidence may be worth controlling for in future research which examines the effects of interventions aimed at relieving social stress. The results also support the notion that repetition may also diminish performance-related stress, since the control group exhibited decreases in cardiovascular stress during some of the test conditions.
The primary finding regarding the second research question emerged through the absence of any systematic attenuation of the psychophysiological reactivity to fictional versus real-world social rejections. In other words, although student teachers knew that improvised social rejections were fictional, their psychophysiological responses during improvisation remained relatively similar and associated with those of real-world rejections. It appears as though personal relevance and engagement during improvisation explain the relatively similar bodily responses. This result suggests that interpersonal encounters can be realistically modelled through applied improvisation.
In this dissertation research, I also produced a validated self-report measure, the Interpersonal Confidence Questionnaire (ICQ), to evaluate the impact of social interaction training relying on applied improvisation. Using an additional dataset (n = 208), I validated the questionnaire and examined the impact of improvisation training on a larger sample. A confirmatory factor analysis identified six factors—performance confidence, flexibility, listening skills, a tolerance for failure, collaboration motivation and presence—that contribute to interpersonal confidence. Thus, the ICQ appeared valid and reliable as a self-report measure of interpersonal confidence.
In summary, the findings from this research indicate that a relatively brief improvisation intervention promotes interpersonal confidence, specifically amongst those with low interpersonal confidence. Furthermore, improvisation training serves as an intervention against performance anxiety and generates long-term improvements to performance confidence. This dissertation provides a theoretical framework and empirical support for the application of improvisation as a tool to develop interpersonal competence skills, particularly within professions requiring face-to-face interactions. Regardless of the fictionality of the improvisational context, genuine emotions and experiences may emerge, serving as experiential learning experiences. The significance of these findings may extend to theatre-based practices and drama education in general, which rely on holistic action and personal engagement in fictional contexts. The findings agree with previous research, suggesting that including the improvisation method in teacher education curricula can enhance student teachers’ interpersonal competence as well as their skills related to sensitive and responsive teaching. Finally, this dissertation contributes to social neuroscience by recommending an ecologically valid experimental design wherein naturally unfolding social interactions can be achieved using improvisation techniques.
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Keywords: experiential learning, fictionality, improvisation, interpersonal confidence, intervention, psychophysiology, social interaction, social rejection, social stress, teacher education, theatre-based practices
... A different study by Mourey and Felsman further suggests that improvisation training has a positive impact on team writing, self-efficacy, and divergent thinking [34], skills that are critical to mod-ern marketing roles. In the marketing field, the idea that improvisational theatre can be beneficial for the development of marketers is confirmed, illustrating the critical importance of exploring improvisation and its role in marketing events and marketing education [35]. At the same time studies have begun to refer to and examine improvisational behavior in the consumer field. ...
Organizations and individuals are unprepared for an unexpected outbreak of COVID-19. While most of the literature focuses on improvised reactions at the organizational level, this paper focuses on understanding improvised reactions at the individual level. This paper draws on previous research applying improvisation to the field of consumer behavior and introduces consumer knowledge acquisition as a mediating variable and tightness-looseness culture as a moderating variable from the perspective of mixed emotions of awe and anxiety to explain the mechanism of consumers with mixed emotions of awe and anxiety on improvisation behavior based on the environment of a COVID-19 outbreak. Data from 330 participants in Study 1 examined the effect of mixed emotions of awe and anxiety on improvisation behavior through knowledge acquisition, and data from 434 participants in Study 2 examined the moderating effect of relaxed culture. The findings suggest that consumers with mixed emotions report a higher willingness to acquire knowledge and report higher levels of improvisational behavior. Consumers behaved differently in different environments. Consumers with mixed emotions responded more strongly to improvisation in the loose-culture environment than in the tight-culture environment, and the mixed emotions of awe and anxiety had a positive effect on individual consumers’ improvisational behavior through the mediating role of knowledge acquisition.
... It enables students to know more about digital marketing and digital skills to be equipped for their future careers. Digital Marketing subject also serves as an opportunity for students to use their creative ideas in proposing better campaigns together with different technological devices for digital marketing Mourey, 2019). All these impacts shall help students to have a higher chance of getting employed in the future. ...
Simulation games in enterprise education are expected to foster the learning experience of the students whilst powering the teaching capabilities of instructors, becoming an additional asset among learning technologies that are more traditionally available. However, research in this area is under-developed, leaving practitioners with limited information with regards to the options available for the implementation of such games. In this chapter, we attempt to help bridge this gap by conducting a review of the existing entrepreneurship gaming landscape. Furthermore, this chapter investigates whether the entrepreneurship games identified appear to have been adopted in higher education and in enterprise education. The Implications for practitioners are also discussed.KeywordsSimulation gamesEnterprise educationLearning technologiesTeaching
... It enables students to know more about digital marketing and digital skills to be equipped for their future careers. Digital Marketing subject also serves as an opportunity for students to use their creative ideas in proposing better campaigns together with different technological devices for digital marketing Mourey, 2019). All these impacts shall help students to have a higher chance of getting employed in the future. ...
Entrepreneurial education has become a buzzword among higher education institutes. Developing the innovative pedagogies to boost the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education has become a big challenge. The present literature review-based study performs the bibliometric analysis, citation analysis, co-authorship analysis of the existing studies based on entrepreneurship pedagogy adopted by higher education institutes. The study finds that the evolution of entrepreneurship education has started only after 2011. The study recommends the development of blending both theory and practicals in order to enhance impact of entrepreneurship courses. Simulation-based pedagogy in entrepreneurship education should be applied toward developing entrepreneurial games for the interested students as a positive impact of simulation games on students’ entrepreneurial intention on the basis of previous studies.KeywordsEntrepreneurshipBibliometric analysisSimulationPedagogyCitation analysisHigher education
... It enables students to know more about digital marketing and digital skills to be equipped for their future careers. Digital Marketing subject also serves as an opportunity for students to use their creative ideas in proposing better campaigns together with different technological devices for digital marketing Mourey, 2019). All these impacts shall help students to have a higher chance of getting employed in the future. ...
This concluding chapter focuses on the future of teaching and learning in enterprise and entrepreneurship education in relation to the adoption of technology. Based on the previous chapters in this dedicated text, it is evident that the adoption of technology will play an important role in the development of teaching and learning pedagogies in this discipline. Building on the key learning outcomes and points that have been discussed, a consensus centring on six points on enterprise and entrepreneurship education have been presented. This ranges from the importance of entrepreneurship education in the development of economic prosperity, enhancing individual learner’s knowledge of enterprise and business start-up, cultivating unique skills for creative thought, recognizing and acting upon commercial opportunities, and developing learner’s confidence to deal with uncertain futures. The evidence suggests that there will be a significant shift towards gamification and simulations, embedding digital technology for quiz activities, reflective practices, measuring the effectiveness of learning programmes, collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches, and the pertinence of knowledge co-creation. This chapter emphasizes the importance of pedagogy that is underpinned by technology adoption, creative approaches to teaching and learning, student-centred learning, flipped classroom approaches, engagement with entrepreneurs, and the focus on tangible outcomes of enterprise and entrepreneurship education provisions.KeywordsTeaching and learningEntrepreneurship educationPedagogyGamificationSimulationFuture
... Drinko (2013b) and 3 to a heightened perception of subtle verbal and nonverbal cues from pupils and, ultimately, to better ensemble collaboration. Furthermore, medical education (Gao et al., 2018;Hoffmann-Longtin et al., 2018), clinical social work and psychotherapy (Romanelli et al., 2017;Romanelli & Tishby, 2019), marketing skills (Mourey, 2020), public speaking competence (Casteleyn, 2019), and organisational creativity (West et al., 2017) have all reportedly benefitted from improvisation training. ...
Theatre-based improvisation includes a model of constructive communication, which has been applied to education, and in fields requiring interpersonal competencies. Here, we present a validation study of the Interpersonal Confidence Questionnaire (ICQ) developed to measure self-reported interpersonal confidence, that is, beliefs regarding one’s capability related to effective social interactions. Confirmatory factor analysis (n = 208) confirmed the 18-item measurement model of ICQ as satisfactory, with six factors contributing to interpersonal confidence: performance confidence, flexibility, listening skills, tolerance of failure, collaboration motivation, and presence. The questionnaire showed discriminatory power, acceptable composite reliability, and strong test–retest reliability. The immediate and long-term impact of six improvisation interventions (n = 161) were measured using ICQ. Improvisation interventions resulted in improvements to interpersonal confidence, performance confidence, and tolerance of failure relative to controls, and an improved performance confidence persisted over time. This study provides initial evidence on the validity and reliability of the 18-item, 6-factor ICQ as a self-report measurement of interpersonal confidence, which may increase following improvisation training.
... It enables students to know more about digital marketing and digital skills to be equipped for their future careers. Digital Marketing subject also serves as an opportunity for students to use their creative ideas in proposing better campaigns together with different technological devices for digital marketing Mourey, 2019). All these impacts shall help students to have a higher chance of getting employed in the future. ...
This chapter first briefly discusses the expected learning outcomes (i.e., skills and competencies) in entrepreneurship education, including creativity, innovation, industry-specific knowledge, decision-making, risk-taking, problem-solving, leadership qualities, ethics, and social responsibility. Next, the chapter examines whether the conventional entrepreneurial curriculum successfully contributes to the academic and social goals and meets the needs and expectations of students and society at large. It also presents a discussion on why the recent socio-cultural, technological, pandemic-related changes, including mass digitalization, working remotely or working from home, asynchronicity and global communities of practice, demand new approaches to enhance learners’ experience and maximize the achievement of learning outcomes in post-secondary entrepreneurship education. Then the chapter explores artificial intelligence (AI), such as the virtual classroom, AI Tutor, interactive smart boards, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), simulation, and big data systems, as a disruptive technology in education. While computer systems with ‘intelligence’ are already performing many tasks that were commonly associated with humans, there are growing interests, concerns and uncertainty regarding the wider application of AI in education. Accordingly, the chapter includes a discussion on the trends in AI adoption in education and how AI is likely to reshape curriculums, teaching and assessment, as well as its positive and negative impacts on teaching and learning. Further, this chapter explores the enormous potential of AI specifically in entrepreneurship education. A rich discussion is presented on the possibilities and conditions for an effective instructor-AI collaboration that can make an important contribution to all the key areas of teaching and learning in entrepreneurship education, such as the curriculum, instruction, assessment and feedback. An instructor-AI collaboration has the potential to improve curriculums, pedagogical practices, learner motivation and engagement, which are critical to achieving learning outcomes. The chapter concludes with the argument that while integrating AI in entrepreneurship education is capital intensive, it is worth investing in instructor-AI collaboration as it facilitates the progress of learners by providing them with customized learning support without unduly limiting individual choice.
... High school students in an improv class (versus a writing class) showed increased word and sentence usage (DeMichele, 2015). And, college students in an improv (versus consumer behavior) class showed increased creative fluency and greater self-efficacy on a marketing task measure (Mourey, 2019). ...
Mental health interventions are severely underutilized for a number of reasons, including high costs and social stigma. An alternative non-stigmatizing method to address many trans-diagnostic psychotherapeutic goals (e.g., psychological flexibility in Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006; Bermant, 2013) is modern American improvisational theater, which has its roots in the 1920s as a tool for facilitating personal and social development (Steitzer, 2011). It has been suggested that improvisation training may reduce anxiety (Krueger, Murphy, & Bink, 2017; Phillips Sheesley, Pfeffer, & Barish, 2016); however, no prior study has examined the relationship between improvisation trainning and social anxiety. Further, no study has explored whether improvisation promotes tolerance for uncertainty, which has been linked to reduced anxiety and shown to explain variance in social anxiety (Boelen, & Reijntjes, 2009). Further, positive effects on mood have been identified in both improvisation and social interaction treatments (Lewis & Lovatt, 2013). This dissertation aims to empirically test whether improvising might benefit psychological health and explore reasons why. Chapter 2 evaluates an existing improvisational theater training program created by The Detroit Creativity Project called The Improv Project, which teaches life skills through improvisational theater to middle and high schoolers in Detroit public schools. Specifically, we find that participating in an improv course predicts reductions in social anxiety. Further, social anxiety does not appear to be a barrier to participation in the project. However, as a field study of an existing program, this method lacks a randomly assigned control condition. Chapter 3 follows an experimental paradigm from previous research linking improvisation training to improvements in divergent thinking in the laboratory (Lewis & Lovatt, 2013). We examine whether a short exposure to improvisational theater training can increase tolerance of uncertainty, shown to predict reductions in social anxiety during cognitive behavior therapy (Mahoney & McEvoy, 2012). We find across two experiments that a brief session of improvising causes improvements in uncertainty tolerance and divergent thinking, as well as affective well-being, compared to a social interaction control. Further, these relative gains appear to depend on which specific features of the improv condition differ from the social interaction control condition. As an experiment with random assignment to condition, this work offers desirable features for internal validity, but lacks generalizability (Cook, Campbell, & Shadish, 2002). Chapter 4 tests the relationship established in Chapter 3 between improv and uncertainty tolerance back in the field setting. Specifically, we find that participating in an improvisational theater program for adolescents (described in Chapter 2) predicts increases in uncertainty tolerance, and replicate the Chapter 2 analysis linking improvisational theater training program with reductions in social anxiety symptoms. Additionally, we find that the increase in uncertainty tolerance in this study also predicts reductions in social anxiety. Taken together, this research provides the first empirical evidence that improvisational theater training benefits those with social anxiety problems, and that this is likely in part because engaging in improvisational theater exercises causes increased tolerance of uncertainty.
... These solutions were subsequently assigned randomly to other participants for their input, and to build and improve the concepts received using the improvisation theater technique of "yes and . . ." (Crossan, 1998;Moshavi, 2001;Mourey, 2020). Participants could further refine and adjust their ideas before final submission. ...
Idea generation and brainstorming are most effective when conducted in groups and in person. However, in‐person co‐creation activities have many limitations. The digital environment provides opportunities to ideate remotely and to enhance creativity. We designed an online experiment to assess the impact of brainwriting on the effectiveness of ideation. Our intention was to determine whether remote digital brainstorming could improve ideation, harnessing diversity in experience and knowledge while problem solving. Results revealed that unusual and novel ideas occurred in approximately 53 percent of cases using our simulated environment. Compared to the presession control activity, ideas generated were more sophisticated and included improvement in all cases. Our experiment demonstrates that digital brainwriting can significantly improve the quality and quantity of new ideas.
... Sales educators and trainers often use applied scenarios, case studies, role plays, and live action simulations to increase engagement and enhance performance outcomes. Improv is considered to be a powerful experiential technique and may provide benefits above and beyond those realized by more common approaches to education (Mourey 2019;Rocco and Whalen 2014). Improv refers to spontaneous scene work in which participants invent or discover the dialogue and action as they perform. ...
Recent studies indicate that women in business-to-business (B2B) sales are underrepresented (Gartner, 2020; USBLS, 2019). Little research examines the use of sales education to help close this gender gap. The purpose of this study is to explore how different genders respond to improvisational (improv) training; a unique approach to teaching sales that prepares learners to adapt to the ever changing needs and expectations of buyers. A content analysis (n = 68; 32% F, 68% M) informs an exploratory study (n = 48; 44% F, 56% M) and post hoc analyses testing: (a) the efficacy of improv training on individual confidence and empathy; and (b) the moderating effect of learned confidence and empathy on adaptability. The findings suggest a global benefit of improv training for both women and men. Interestingly, women’s confidence increases significantly to a level above men post-intervention and their attitudes toward the sales profession improves. Thus, sales training programs should consider adding improv training to enhance adaptive selling performance for all sales professionals, while empowering selling confidence in female sales professionals.
The development and enhancement of creative thinking capacities is essential to marketing students’ success. But despite marketing students’ need to enhance and evidence their creative capacity skill set for the careers of the future, there exist few available models for marketing educators to introduce creative thinking skill development. This paper outlines how marketing educators can embed creative capacity skill development training in existing course designs using online masterclasses. Findings from a study of undergraduate marketing students enrolled in a pilot creative capacity development online masterclass reveal that this teaching innovation can be effectively employed to foster and enhance creative capacity skills. After participating in the embedded online masterclass, student assessments related to key creativity-development relevant learning objectives and ATTA scores both improved. This case example of microlearning and creativity focused skill development provides key insights into the ways in which we might develop the critical creative capacities of our students across disciplinary contexts using online microlearning modalities. A detailed project implementation plan and suggested model of masterclass content are provided for educators interested in helping learners develop the creative capacities they need for the careers of the future.
Live cases, where students work directly with an outside organization to solve real-world problems, can be an immersive learning experience for marketing students. Current scholarship on live case usage in marketing is limited to small samples from a handful of live case devotees. This article draws from a large, international sample of 169 marketing educators to investigate the perceived educational impacts of live cases on student skill development. Specifically, the paper explores student teamwork, conflict handling, time management, presentation, communication, and critical thinking skills. Additionally, the article explores how student skill development is affected by the amount of course time dedicated to the live case as well as faculty experience with live cases.
Undergraduate marketing degrees have been shown to have the same impact on post-graduation income for marketing jobs as non-marketing undergraduate degrees for similar marketing jobs. Moreover, having a marketing degree has been shown to not impact long-term career satisfaction. However, previous research has not accounted for the possible differential impact of curriculum design on post-graduation income and long-term career satisfaction. In other words, not all marketing programs are the same. In this paper, we describe an innovative yearlong marketing honors program that uses six best practices drawn from the marketing education literature in its design and implementation. We then compare the starting salaries after college and current career satisfaction of graduates from the marketing honors program with those of graduates from a non-honors marketing program in the same university. We demonstrate the differential impact of course-level, programmatic, and extra-curricular design choices on career outcomes. Implications are then discussed that impact marketing curriculum design.
Whether watching a movie, sports game, or musical performance, consumers often seek entertainment experiences that are produced by one or more individuals. And although consumers often witness producers acting spontaneously, little is known about the preference for spontaneity in entertainment. Six studies, including real consumer-relevant decisions and a Facebook field experiment, reveal that consumers prefer spontaneity (vs. planned behavior) across several entertainment contexts, as spontaneous producers seem more authentic than planned producers. At the same time, however, spontaneous actions are also believed to beget lower-quality outcomes, suggesting that consumers generally prefer spontaneity even despite the possibility of reduced quality. Subsequent experiments examine characteristics of the entertainment context and producer to provide further insight into how consumers manage the authenticity-quality trade-off: By shaping when and why spontaneity is associated with increased authenticity and decreased quality expectations, as well as the relative importance of these dimensions, higher-stakes contexts (e.g., when consumers’ outcomes are enmeshed with the producer’s), negative inferences about spontaneity (e.g., laziness, lack of concern), and low-competence producers attenuate the effects. Together, this research advances knowledge about spontaneity and authenticity and has implications for those seeking to produce appealing entertainment experiences.
Universities and colleges are faced with the duty of responding to changes in the future employment market by adjusting their teaching modules or curriculum to meet the various demands. Students will obtain skills, information, and abilities that are relevant to contemporary market needs as a result of these improvements in the teaching module. In every area, such as digital advertising, digital marketing, and e-commerce, the new digital trend is moving toward a concentration on digital capabilities. This has an impact on the future employment market and increases the demand for new skills. With the increasing trend toward digitalization, graduates must equip themselves with the most up-to-date skill sets in order to meet future job market demands. The purpose of this research is to determine the factors that influence teaching delivery effectiveness in the Digital Marketing subject, to investigate the effects of studying digital marketing, and to determine the relationship between teaching delivery effectiveness and the factors that influence teaching delivery effectiveness in digital marketing. The research uses a quantitative methodology and is best suited for studies that require a high number of respondents during data collection, such as hypothesis testing. The findings reveal that student characteristics have little bearing on the efficiency of digital marketing training in the classroom. Other aspects that influence the success of the teaching delivery of the digital marketing course include teaching style, teaching model, and classroom climate. This study’s contribution allows university coordinators to collaborate directly with professional agencies by incorporating a digital marketing certification program within the course syllabus to improve students’ abilities.KeywordsDigital marketingMarket needsMalaysian UniversityKnowledgee-commerce
In response to the Journal of Marketing Education special issue on teaching turmoil and triumphs in times of crisis, we develop and test a student anxiety, preparation and learning framework for responding to external crises. We use structural equation modeling to assess how COVID-19 anxiety impacts classrelated anxiety, class preparation, and class learning, and how these then affect class satisfaction and intent to pursue a sales career. Using three sequential virtual sales competitions, we test our model in the immediate aftermath of the transition from live in-class learning to virtual learning brought on by COVID-19, offering an ideal setting for investigating marketing education in a time of crisis. The findings are unique, and show that how crises are managed impacts the deleterious effects of anxiety on education and learning. While anxiety had the greatest influence on class preparation, class preparation in turn was not related to class learning, class satisfaction, nor intent to pursue a sales career. However, when digital self-efficacy was considered as a moderator, the expected effects of class preparation emerged. Our findings contribute to multiple theoretical contexts, including anxiety, crisis management, self-efficacy, marketing education, and virtual sales role-plays.
Background
Training in improvisational theater is a widely available, popular and entertaining activity. It also is linked to a variety of psychological benefits, such as reductions in anxiety and depression in adult psychiatric patients (Krueger et al., 2017) and in social anxiety among adolescent public-school students (Felsman et al., 2019). However, research on its benefits has generally lacked the rigor of randomized experiments.
Aims
This paper follows an experimental method from previous research linking improvisation training to improvements in divergent thinking in the laboratory (Lewis & Lovatt, 2013), and includes an additional dependent variable, uncertainty tolerance, which has been broadly implicated in anxiety and depression (McEvoy & Mahoney, 2012).
Method
In two experiments (n = 74, n = 131), participants completed measures of divergent thinking, uncertainty tolerance, and affective well-being before and after engaging in 20 min of improv exercises or a matched control condition including social interactions.
Results
This paper replicates the prior finding that improvisational theater training can improve divergent thinking (e.g., Lewis & Lovatt, 2013; Sowden et al., 2015), and provides new findings that improv can boost positive affect and increase uncertainty tolerance relative to other social interactions.
Conclusions
As a means to enhance psychological health, improvisational theater training offers benefits without the negative stigma and difficulties in access surrounding other therapeutic interventions. These results support its popular use beyond the theater to improve social and personal interactions in a variety of settings (e.g., Tint & Froerer, 2014).
Academic programs and educators face numerous challenges related to teaching digital marketing. Today, the world of marketing is digital and marketing programs have struggled to maintain pace with the changes influencing marketing practice. The authors describe the M-School program at Loyola Marymount University, a program developed to address this challenge by placing digital marketing at the center of the curriculum. Through experiential learning and project-based learning, M-School courses expose students to real-life challenges involving ways in which companies and organizations generate consumer awareness, demand, and value given the significant digital shifts taking place in technology and consumer behavior. The authors highlight the creation of a digital-first curriculum that is aligned with industry practice and helps students develop the skills needed to become future proof and real-world ready. Quantitative and qualitative assessment over a three-year period points to the success of the M-School program in preparing students for careers in marketing. Lessons for the development of marketing curricula include the role of new course development, the need to integrate digital within existing courses, the role of a project-based learning approach with measurable outcomes, and the potential for designing transdisciplinary courses to foster students’ creative, critical thinking, communication, and collaborative skills.
This paper describes a systems approach to creative problem solving designed to better prepare marketing graduates for the uncertainties of the networked information society. This is in response to the growing need for future graduates to be able to make effective use of participatory Web 2.0 technologies for building customer relationships and harnessing their creative potential to collaboratively influence and improve product development, and to market products more effectively. The paper outlines alternative marketing paradigms, describes the attributes required of graduates to be able to maximize the potential of Web 2.0 technologies, and the role that creativity plays in developing graduates’ ability to think critically, identify and solve problems, and communicate effectively. The failure of traditional approaches in teaching and learning to facilitate student creativity is discussed and a systems approach to creative problem solving designed to address these identified challenges is proposed. Illustrative examples of the use of the approach in graduate and undergraduate courses are presented and the potential for integration within the marketing curriculum is discussed.
The benefit of arts education for cultural engagement, wider academic achievement, and as a contributor to the creative economy is a subject of significant debate. In the present work, we focus on the potential for simple, arts-based improvisation activities to enhance divergent thinking skills and creativity in primary school-age children. In the first experiment, we compare the effect of children taking part in an improvised versus nonimprovised dance class on their subsequent performance on the Instances Task (Wallach&Kogan, 1965) and on a creative "toy" design task. In a second experiment, children took part in verbal and acting improvisation games or in matched control games before completing figural activity 1 of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1974). In both experiments, we found that children who took part in the improvisation interventions showed better divergent thinking and creativity after the intervention. Our findings suggest that simple, arts-based improvisation interventions could have domain-general benefits for creative cognition processes. Furthermore, they indicate one way in which simply making better use of existing arts education provision could provide a cost-effective way to increase creativity-relevant skills in primary schoolchildren. We consider putative mechanisms for the improvisation effects and specify directions for future work.
As calls for enhancing the ability of business students to think creatively and develop innovative goods and services have become universal, researchers in the area of creativity have expressed concerns that the U.S. educational system may not foster creative thinking. The authors’ research is based on a sample of 442 undergraduate business students enrolled in marketing classes at two different universities. Students’ creativity was assessed using a creativity scale that measured ways of thinking in six different areas. The authors compared creativity scores of different business majors in each of these six dimensions and found that contrary to earlier research findings, students in the quantitative business disciplines of accounting, finance, economics, and information systems outperformed other business majors in some categories of creative thinking. Specific recommendations are presented to include training in a greater variety of dimensions of creative thinking in the business curriculum.
To deal with change, organizations need to find and nurture those who are most facile in dealing with it. Identifying those who can learn to behave in new ways requires a different measurement strategy from those often employed, one that looks at the characteristics of the learning agile. In this article, we explain some initial steps toward identifying the women and men with the most potential to lead, regardless of what the future may hold for them. As indicated by a measure of learning from experience, those with the highest potential tend to be interested in first-time challenges, are eager to learn, and can get results under tough conditions. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons Inc.
textlessptextgreaterThis 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.
This chapter discusses cognitive processes in improvisation. Improvisation is thus central to the formation of new ideas in all areas of human endeavor. Its importance experientially rests with its magical and self-liberating qualities. Its importance scientifically is that it presents one with the clearest, least edited version of how one think, encoded in behavior. It is among the time-based arts, namely music, dance, theatre and mime that one find the greatest literature. From a survey of this material, certain facts emerge quite consistently, and allow the formulation of plausible cognitive models for improvisation. Much of the variety of improvisation comes from the many different types of referent which may be used, and the many kinds of relationships the improviser may choose to set up between the referent and the sounds, movement, words, etc., that constitute the improvised behavior.
This study of job advertisements extends our understanding of how employers, rather than researchers, describe the specific skills and attributes sought in candidates for employment in graduate marketing roles in Australia. The article presents the findings of a content analysis of 359 marketing job advertisements downloaded in 2016, in two periods 6 months apart, from the dominant job finding website in Australia, seek.com.au. These data offer detailed primary records authored by employers, and set the research apart from most studies, which rely on generic variables imposed by academics, despite the mooted gap between academia and the business sector. The most demanded attributes included motivation, time management, communication skills, and digital marketing experience. This raises questions about the purpose of a degree, and whether marketing curricula are fit for purpose. The article explores these findings and other preconditions for being “work-ready,” and the study contributes to the underdeveloped employability research from Australia.
In an application of experiential learning, assessment, and career development, this article reports a field experiment of teaching sales students adaptive selling skills via an Improvisational (Improv) Comedy technique: Yes, And. Students learn this well-established theatrical improv method via classroom lecture, demonstration, and role-playing exercises. A control group (no improv training) experienced all aspects of the class with the exception of the improv training. After the classroom instruction, both student groups (improv and no -improv trained) participated in a real-world, 4-week sales project selling tickets for professional sport teams that partner with the class. The study’s findings reveal increased ticket sales performance among the improv group students who learn Yes, And. Also students in the improv group gave higher class evaluations. Methods presented in this article could be utilized as an in-class exercise or as an integral part of a semester-long sales project.
It has often been proposed, or assumed, that improvisation is a useful metaphor to provide insight into managing a nd organizing. However, improvisation is more than a metaphor. It is an orientation and a technique to enhance the strategic renewal of an organization. The bridge between theory and practice is made through exercises used to develop the capacity to improvise, borrowed from theatre improvisation. This paper describes a typical improvisation workshop in developing six key areas that link improvisation exercises to the practice of management: interpreting the environment; crafting strategy; cultivating leadership; fostering teamwork; developing individual skills; and assessing organizational culture.
“Design thinking” has generated significant attention in the business press and has been heralded as a novel problem-solving methodology well suited to the often-cited challenges business organizations face in encouraging innovation and growth. Yet the specific mechanisms through which the use of design, approached as a thought process, might improve innovation outcomes have not received significant attention from business scholars. In particular, its utility has only rarely been linked to the academic literature on individual cognition and decision-making. This perspective piece advocates addressing this omission by examining “design thinking” as a practice potentially valuable for improving innovation outcomes by helping decision-makers reduce their individual level cognitive biases. In this essay, I first review the assumptions, principles, and key process tools associated with design thinking. I then establish its foundation in the decision-making literature, drawing on an extensive body of research on cognitive biases and their impact. The essay concludes by advancing a set of propositions and research implications, aiming to demonstrate one particular path that future research might take in assessing the utility of design thinking as a method for improving organizational outcomes related to innovation. In doing so, it seeks to address the challenge of conducting academic research on a practice that is obviously popular in management circles but appears resistant to rigorous empirical inquiry because of the multifaceted nature of its “basket” of tools and processes and the complexity of measuring the outcomes it produces.
In the aggregate, marketing may be conceptualized as the process of offering creative solutions to consumer problems. As such, educational emphasis should be given to increasing students’ knowledge of the creative problem-solving (CPS) process. Unfortunately, past research has given little attention to the CPS process itself. The purpose of this article is to better familiarize marketing educators with the CPS process and its connection to marketing practice. In addition, an instructional approach is offered that employs the use of assorted CPS techniques in conjunction with different stages of the CPS process.
As organizations become more complex and dynamic, individuals’ ability to learn from experience becomes more important. Recently, the concept of learning agility has attracted considerable attention from human resource professionals and consultants interested in selecting on and developing employees’ ability to learn from experience. However, the academic community has been largely absent from this discussion of learning agility, and the concept remains ill defined and poorly measured. This article presents a constructive critique of the existing literature on learning agility, seeks to clarify the definition and conceptualization of the construct, and situates learning agility within a broader nomological network of related constructs. We conclude by discussing several important directions for future research on learning agility.
Improvisational comedy emphasizes collaboration over competition. This leads to creative ideas and solutions to problems. By establishing this “improv mind-set” in the business classroom, an instructor may be able to overcome some of the problems associated with the case method (e.g., shy students, dominating students). By doing so, the learning environment of the classroom may be enhanced, and case discussions and learning outcomes may be improved. To frame the issue, the case method and some of its challenges are first discussed. Then the improv mind-set is explained and specific improv guidelines are offered. Finally, the author describes his experiences with trying to establish such a mind-set in a marketing class.
According to both the popular press and academia, creativity is an important skill for business practice and marketing education. This article addresses “What is creativity?” and “Can creativity be taught or nurtured?” and provides an analysis of both student perceptions about creativity and their levels of creativity. The results indicate that both business and marketing students perceived creativity as important to their career. Marketing students placed greater importance on creativity than other business students and found creativity to be as important to their careers as other important skills (e.g., writing, oral presentation, teamwork, etc.). It was also found that the marketing and other business students believed that creativity is a skill that can be learned. Although marketing students have a better appreciation of the importance of creativity than other business students, they do not appear to be more creative than other business students or nonbusiness students.
The rapidly changing nature of the workplace and the composition of the current generation of students call for new paradigms for delivering business education. Teaching, once largely a teacher-centered, product-based activity, is becoming increasingly student centered and process based. However, this approach raises significant problems for students, faculty members, clients, and institutions. The authors use an example of an interdisciplinary exercise in which students from both marketing and entrepreneurship courses were paired to develop marketing plans for small-business owners. Students derived significant benefits from this process-focused experience, such as development of skills in creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and so on. The authors highlight issues that must be addressed and a range of solutions in order to facilitate this paradigm shift in ways that benefit all of those involved.
Negotiators must improvise. As the negotiations process unfolds, they work with new information, continually making decisions along the way to achieve favorable results. Skilled improvisational jazz musicians and actors perform in similar ways: they repeatedly practice song chord progressions and notes or scene guidelines before a performance; then, during the performance, they work with the information or the music they hear in order to react and respond, making decisions along the way to produce dazzling music or a compelling scene. In this article, two experts in negotiation, a jazz‐improvisation scholar, a former member of an improvisational theater troupe, and a psychotherapist versed in therapeutic improvisational techniques explore the improvisational nature of negotiation.
Several aspects of negotiation are similar to improvisation. Both negotiators and improvisational performers need to have a similar mind‐set to be successful, both need to recognize and/or change that mind‐set at times, and both must craft creative solutions. But there are some significant differences between improvisational performance and negotiation practice, which this article also notes. For example, personal charisma (“star quality”) is a common attribute of successful performers, but not something negotiators may always rely on. Similarly, improvisational artists usually work as a team, while a negotiator is often on his or her own. Nonetheless, the incorporation of improvisation techniques into the negotiation skills repertoire holds great promise for practicing negotiators and is a worthy topic of future negotiation research and teaching.
Consumers today have more choices of products and services than ever before, but they seem dissatisfied. Firms invest in greater product variety but are less able to differentiate themselves. Growth and value creation have become the dominant themes for managers. In this paper, we explain this paradox. The meaning of value and the process of value creation are rapidly shifting from a product- and firm-centric view to personalized consumer experiences. Informed, networked, empowered, and active consumers are increasingly co-creating value with the firm. The interaction between the firm and the consumer is becoming the locus of value creation and value extraction. As value shifts to experiences, the market is becoming a forum for conversation and interactions between consumers, consumer communities, and firms. It is this dialogue, access, transparency, and understanding of risk-benefits that is central to the next practice in value creation.
This article first examines whether brand exposure elicits automatic behavioral effects as does exposure to social primes. Results support the translation of these effects: participants primed with Apple logos behave more creatively than IBM primed and controls; Disney-primed participants behave more honestly than E!-primed participants and controls. Second, this article investigates the hypothesis that exposure to goal-relevant brands (i.e., those that represent a positively valenced characteristic) elicits behavior that is goal directed in nature. Three experiments demonstrate that the primed behavior showed typical goal-directed qualities, including increased performance postdelay, decreased performance postprogress, and moderation by motivation. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
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