This was originally posted 2 Oct 2011.

At InfoCampSC, I decided to host a session on using Improv Games for Innovation to share some of what I learned from Mike Sutton at Agile Coach Camp.  It was a hit!

We played 3 games; I used the machine as a warm-up.  With 12 people, we had a nice machine running.  This machine was dubbed “The Library Stamper”.

We then moved into a game where I had 4 folks describing what they disliked or problems using MS-Excel.  Teams of two folks would cherry pick these problems and run and create a potential solution for the problem and then create a further idea off that one and so on until they had 4 ideas.  Then they were to go cherry pick another problem.  We really got some creative answers.  By using improv, it focuses you on just creating ideas and not judging them.

We next used teams of two taking turns to create a story line.  They had 30 seconds with their first round and then 15 seconds the second round.  The story line was quite creative (I feel sorry for Google) and fun.

(The photo of this seems to have gotten lost; if I can find it, I’ll re-add it…)

I summarized how the concept of Yes And… is the way to create new ideas building on each other.

We closed with creating a picture of how folks thought the session went. Each person got to add one line.  Here is the result…

We concluded it was a dragon (perhaps with a Maori bent)…