Using IT to Unleash the Power of Strategic Improvisation

To lead their company toward success in today’s ever-changing landscape, managers need to know how to rapidly and creatively use their organization’s capabilities to seize opportunities before others do. We term this leadership team capability strategic improvisation. Strategic improvisation, as an alternative to traditional planning for urgent situations, builds on clear and real-time information and communication. After surveying multiple executive respondents in 100 organizations, we found that information technology (IT) capabilities, especially information management capability and IT infrastructure flexibility, facilitate strategic improvisation. These capabilities play different roles depending on the type of IT strategy the organization follows. Other factors, including the organization’s competitive environment and design, affect the development and impact of strategic improvisation. In a rapidly changing business environment, an organization is best served by strategic improvisation when it has an innovative IT strategy, a flexible IT infrastructure, a loose organizational structure and an experimental culture.