What If?
What If is an applied exercise in which participants generate hypothetical scenarios by completing the prompt 'What if...' and then exploring the implications of each scenario seriously, training divergent thinking, assumption challenging, and the capacity to follow speculative threads to useful conclusions.
Structure
The Prompt
The facilitator presents a challenge, system, or situation as the context. Participants are invited to generate 'What if...' questions about it.
The Generation
Participants call out 'What if...' completions rapidly, without filtering for plausibility or relevance. The goal is volume: what if the process ran backwards, what if the customer was the product, what if there were no budget.
The Exploration
Selected 'What if' scenarios are explored in pairs or small groups, following the implications of the scenario seriously for two to three minutes before reporting back.
How to Teach It
Objectives
What If trains the habit of questioning assumptions by making the questioning explicit and playful. The 'What if...' frame gives participants permission to challenge things that feel fixed without committing to actually changing them.
Facilitation Notes
Praise outrageous scenarios alongside plausible ones. The implausible scenarios often contain the most useful reframings.
Common Pitfalls
Participants generate 'What if' scenarios that are minor variations on the existing situation rather than genuine departures. Encourage wilder premises and trust participants to find the insight in them.
In Applied Settings
Strategy and Innovation Workshops
What If is used as an assumption-surfacing tool in strategic planning, helping teams identify which of their operating assumptions are load-bearing and which can be challenged to reveal new possibilities.
Product Development
Product teams use What If to reframe user problems: what if the user had no time, no budget, no technical knowledge. Each constraint surfaces a different design requirement.
Scenario Planning
Facilitators use What If to help organizations rehearse responses to disruption, building adaptive capacity by exploring alternative futures before they arrive.
Skills Developed
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How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). What If?. Retrieved March 19, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-if
The Improv Archive. "What If?." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-if.
The Improv Archive. "What If?." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/what-if. Accessed March 19, 2026.
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