ABSTRACT
Improvisation is contrasted with planning, as action that is executed on the fly without advance preparation. This contrast falters over the recognition that improvisation shares many features with planning, including temporally extended structure and orientation towards a goal. This recognition gives rise to attempts to assimilate improvisation to planning, or vice versa, as a mere variant. The first section of this chapter explains why it is important to resist assimilation, which flies in the face of both the phenomenology of action and the way action is categorised by the behavioural sciences. Moreover, it represents an implicit evaluation with implications for social justice issues. This leaves the question of how planning and improvisation are related to each other. The second part offers an “iceberg” model for understanding this relationship. The tip of the iceberg represents the more difficult and noticeable ability to plan, while the much larger part of the iceberg under the water represents the more fundamental but less noticed ability to improvise. This model is fleshed out with reference to dual-system theories of cognitive functioning. The chapter concludes that we are fundamentally improvisers who occasionally plan, not planners who occasionally improvise.
