Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), a leading psychologist of his generation known for field theory and the theory of group dynamics, provided the foundations of organizational development, which began to gain traction in the 1950s. According to the Cambridge Business Dictionary, “organizational development” (OD) today is defined as “the process of making a large company or organization more effective, for example, by giving employees the skills they need to develop and to deal with new situations or markets.” In 1971, OD was defined as “an educational strategy employing experienced-based behavior in order to achieve a self-renewing organization,” and the goals were:

库尔特·刘温（1890-1947），他那一代的主要心理学家，以场论和群体动力学理论而闻名，他为组织发展提供了基础，并在20世纪50年代开始获得吸引力。根据《剑桥商业词典》，如今的“组织发展”(OD)被定义为“使一个大公司或组织更有效的过程，例如，通过给予员工发展和处理新情况或市场所需的技能。” 1971年，od 被定义为“一种以经验为基础的行为来实现自我更新的组织的教育策略” ，其目标是:

Creating an open, problem-solving climate; supplementing the authority of status with that of competence; building trust; reducing inappropriate competition and fostering collaboration; developing reward systems which recognize both organizational and individual goals; locating decision-making and problem-solving responsibilities close to the information sources; increasing the sense of “ownership” of the organization and its objectives; and increasing self-control and self-direction for organizational members. (Kegan 1971: 456)

创造开放、解决问题的环境；用能力补充地位权威；建立信任；减少不适当的竞争和促进合作；发展承认组织和个人目标的奖励系统；使决策和解决问题的责任靠近信息来源；增加组织及其目标的“所有权”意识；增加组织成员的自我控制和自治。（凯根语，1971年：456年）

In our research, we have yet to find evidence of improvisational theatre processes specifically applied to OD programs in the 1960s through the late 1980s to meet these goals. However, we’d like to point out how most of the goals outlined above are analogous to the goals of AI. Consequently, we are somewhat surprised that early workers in OD, a field that is rooted in behavioral science, did not see the connection to improvisation as had others mentioned earlier working in disciplines of psychology and sociology.

在我们的研究中，我们还没有找到在20世纪60年代到80年代后期的证据来达到这些目标。但是，我们想指出，上述概述的大多数目标与人工智能的目标有何相似。因此，我们有点惊讶的是，植根于行为科学领域的早期工作者没有像早期在心理学和社会学学科工作的其他人那样看到与即兴创作的联系。

By the 1990s, we know that organizations were welcoming improvisation into their training. Several of our authors, in fact, began their AI work at this time.9 Still, as Dusya Vera and Mary Crossan (2005: 203) discovered, while conducting research on improvisation training for innovative performance in teams, “limited theoretical work is available on what it takes to develop this skill. Also, there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting the success of any improvisational training effort.”” In 2007, Keith Sawyer wrote that we are now in a “culture of collaborative organization ... based on flexibility, connection, [and] conversation” in which “improvised innovation is standard business practice” (156). So why was there and why is there still a dearth of theoretical and empirical research on improvisation integrated into OD strategies? Why is OD so late to the AI party? Over the past decade, a handful of distinguished authors have published significant monographs that point to the relevance of improvisation practice to spontaneous decision-making, to marketing and sales, to communication, to structuring of organizations, and to collaborative creation and innovation.10

到了20世纪90年代，我们知道各组织都欢迎即兴创作来接受他们的培训。事实上，我们的几位作者就在此时开始了他们的人工智能工作。9和DusyaVera和MaraCrossan（2005：203）在为团队创新表现进行即兴创作训练的研究中发现，“发展这项技能的理论工作有限。此外，缺乏经验证据支持任何即兴培训工作的成功。2007年，基思·索耶写道，我们现在处于“协作组织文化……基于灵活性、联系和对话”，其中“即兴创新是标准商业实践”（156）。那么，为什么会有，为什么仍然缺乏关于即兴创作的理论和实证研究呢？为什么去人工智能派对会这么晚？在过去的十年里，一些杰出的作者发表了重要的专著，指出即兴创作实践与自发决策、市场营销和销售、沟通、组织结构、合作创造和创新的相关性！

But the amount of published research widely available does not proportionately represent the growth and diversity of AI practice happening around the globe. We hope that this book will inspire other AI facilitators to begin immediately documenting, writing about, and publishing their own stories and strategies.

但广泛发表的研究成果的数量并没有按比例代表全球正在发生的人工智能实践的增长和多样性。我们希望这本书能激励其他人工智能主持人立即开始记录、写作和出版他们自己的故事和策略。