Jazzing Up Creativity: Cultivating Creative Competence Through Improvisation as a Dialogic Practice

ABSTRACT

This study examines how creative competence develops through improvisation as a dialogic practice within collaborative groups. Building on the notion of polyphony from communication theory, we conceptualize improvisation as an interactional process through which participants generate, enact, and integrate micro‐responses in real time. We draw on 27 in‐depth interviews with world‐renowned jazz musicians conducted immediately after performance. The analysis identifies three interrelated dimensions of improvisation as a dialogic practice: constitutive communication, situated performativity, and reflexive structuring. Viewed in concert, these dimensions explain how creative competence emerges through a process of distributed micro‐responsiveness , as participants continuously shape and adjust to one another's actions. Our contribution is threefold. First, we advance a dialogic view of improvisation as a source of creative competence through collaborative interaction. Second, we develop a process framework explaining how interrelated dimensions of improvisation are enacted and become mutually reinforcing in practice, thereby shaping the development of creative competence. Third, we introduce distributed micro‐responsiveness as the interactional dynamic through which these dimensions collectively foster creative competence. We conclude by outlining future research directions and practical implications for fostering creative competence in uncertain and interdependent contexts.