Creative Solution Building
Creative Solution Building is an applied improvisation exercise in which participants use improvisational principles -- acceptance, building, and collaborative emergence -- to develop solutions to presented problems or scenarios. Rather than analyzing the problem and generating solutions individually, participants build solutions incrementally through a structured ensemble process, with each contribution extending and complying with what has already been offered.
Structure
Problem Setup
The facilitator presents a challenge or scenario requiring a solution. The problem may be a real organizational challenge, a fictional scenario, or an abstracted version of a recurring workplace difficulty. Participants have not been given time to prepare solutions in advance.
Building in Rounds
Participants take turns adding one element to a developing solution. Each contribution must begin by accepting what the previous contributor proposed before adding a new element. The sequence follows the improv yes-and principle: accept-and-extend rather than propose-and-replace. No contribution may negate or substantially revise what a previous participant has established.
Iteration
After the first pass, the facilitator introduces a constraint or complication that the solution must now accommodate. The group continues building, adapting the emerging solution to the new constraint without abandoning its existing elements.
Conclusion
The group examines the solution that has emerged, assessing what works, what surprising elements appeared, and whether the collaborative process produced something different from what any individual would have proposed.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Creative Solution Building targets collaborative ideation, the acceptance of others' contributions as building blocks rather than as proposals to evaluate, and the production of emergent solutions that no single participant would have generated alone.
How to Explain It
"We're building a solution together, but with one rule: you can only add, not replace. Take what the last person offered and build on it. Don't start over. Don't go back. Just add the next piece."
Common Pitfalls
Participants with high investment in their own ideas sometimes offer contributions that effectively restart the solution from their preferred starting point rather than extending what was already there. Facilitators should intervene when the yes-and chain is broken, asking the contributor to find a way to include the previous element rather than overwrite it.
In Applied Settings
Learning Objectives
Creative Solution Building addresses the organizational pattern of solution generation as individual competition -- a dynamic where participants advocate for their own preferred approach rather than building on each other's ideas. The exercise develops the behavioral discipline of building on what exists before proposing what is new, which produces solutions that incorporate more of the group's knowledge and investment.
Workplace Transfer
The accept-and-extend discipline transfers to any collaborative problem-solving context: product development, process design, strategic planning, and project troubleshooting. Organizations that adopt the pattern generate solutions that reflect the full range of the team's knowledge rather than the preferred solution of the most vocal or senior participant. The exercise is particularly relevant for cross-functional teams where diverse expertise needs to be integrated rather than adjudicated.
Facilitation Context
The exercise is used in innovation workshops, team problem-solving sessions, product development programs, and strategy retreats. It works with groups of any size and requires no improv experience; the yes-and rule is simple to explain and immediately applicable.
Debrief Framing
Facilitators ask: "What surprised you about the solution that emerged? What elements appeared that you would not have included if working alone? When did you find it hardest to accept what the previous person offered? What does this process suggest about how your team currently generates and evaluates ideas?"
Skills Developed
Worth Reading
See all books →
Applied Improvisation
Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre
Theresa Robbins Dudeck; Caitlin McClure
The Applied Improvisation Mindset
Tools for Transforming Individuals, Organizations, and Communities
Theresa Robbins Dudeck; Caitlin McClure
Yes, And
How Improvisation Reverses No, But Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration
Kelly Leonard; Tom Yorton
Brain Disruption
Radical Innovation in Business Through Improv
Bruce Montgomery; Gail Montgomery
The Improvisation Book
How to Conduct Successful Improvisation Sessions
John S.C. Abbott
Group Improvisation
The Manual of Ensemble Improv Games
Peter Campbell Gwinn; Charna Halpern
Related Exercises
Problem Solving
Problem Solving is an applied improvisation exercise from Business Improv in which teams tackle challenges using "Yes, And" principles and other improvisational techniques. Rather than following traditional analytical frameworks, participants generate solutions through rapid ideation, collaborative building, and the willingness to explore unconventional approaches.
Creative Inspiration
Creative Inspiration is a category of applied improvisation exercises that use unexpected prompts, arbitrary constraints, and non-linear starting points to spark creative thinking and generate innovative approaches to familiar problems. The exercises work by disrupting habitual thinking patterns: participants are forced to make associations and connections they would not reach through direct analytical approaches. They are used in innovation, ideation, and creative problem-solving programs.
Building Blocks Brainstorm
Unlike traditional brainstorming, this exercise focuses on a single idea and has the group build on it iteratively, brick by brick, until a complete concept emerges.
Question Storming
Question Storming is an applied improvisation exercise from Max Dickins' Improvise! in which participants brainstorm questions rather than answers about a challenge. By reframing the creative process away from solutions and toward inquiry, the exercise reveals hidden assumptions, opens new angles of exploration, and demonstrates that asking the right question is often more valuable than generating quick answers.
Silo-Busting Exercise
Silo-Busting Exercise is an applied improvisation exercise in which a team facing a real challenge invites people from a completely separate department to join their brainstorming session. The outside participants bring fresh perspectives, unfamiliar frameworks, and no institutional assumptions, breaking the echo-chamber dynamic that limits innovation within isolated teams.
Generate New Ideas
Generate New Ideas is an applied improv exercise in which a group collectively invents a product from scratch -- naming it, developing taglines and jingles, assigning a celebrity spokesperson, and creating a brief promotional pitch -- through a rapid, collaborative ideation process. The exercise uses the product-invention framework as a vehicle for practicing group creativity, spontaneous Yes-And building, and comfort with presenting unfinished ideas with confidence.
The Lineage
Explore the schools and structures that influenced or evolved from Creative Solution Building.
Applied Improvisation (Dudeck & McClure)
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Creative Solution Building. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/creative-solution-building
The Improv Archive. "Creative Solution Building." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/creative-solution-building.
The Improv Archive. "Creative Solution Building." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/creative-solution-building. Accessed September 28, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.