The field of marketing strategy often makes the important assumption that marketing strategy should occur by first composing a plan on the basis of a careful review of environmental and firm information and then executing that plan. However, there are cases when the composition and execution of an action converge in time so that, in the limit, they occur simultaneously. A study defines such a convergence as improvisation and develops hypotheses to investigate the conditions in which improvisation is likely to occur and be effective. The study tests these hypotheses in a longitudinal study of new product development activities. Results show that organizational improvisation occurs moderately in organizations and that organizational memory level decreases and environmental turbulence level increases the incidence of improvisation.

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