Count the number of times you’ve said “no” to an idea. Whether you inadvertently put out a spark of brilliance or nixed a nonstarter, your response took away someone else’s opportunity to feel heard. And that’s an innovation killer.

No one knows this truth better than improv expert Karen Hough. Go With It: Embrace the Unexpected to Drive Change brings you Hough’s discoveries from the front lines of innovation. She has seen how business innovators deal with dichotomy by preparing, playing, and thinking upside down. Improv troupes succeed on stage because they apply the “Yes, and” principle. Whatever the first person says, the next person affirms and adds to it. But this practice isn’t limited to onstage brilliance—corporate teams caught up in old patterns of thought and action can learn to improvise and innovate, too. Pharmaceutical scientists who know how to improvise can accelerate their fuzzy front-end work on new drugs. Technologists who are masters of going with it know how to successfully bring their breakthroughs to market. Executives who use improv techniques get their teams working and innovating together. Their stories fill this book. And they emphasize that it’s the process of listening, agreeing, and discussing an idea that’s monumentally important.

Hough shows you that anyone can learn to be more creative and innovative. It just takes flexibility, humour, and focus—that’s improv.