Creating, Growing and Sustaining Efficient Innovation Teams

Economic forces such as the growing service economy and commoditization of traditional value chains have led many organizations to pursue breakthrough innovations as part of their business strategy. There has been an increased interest in collaboration and teamwork as catalysts of innovation, often without a clear understanding of the different kinds of teams that can be used to foster innovation or the kinds of team building that will be most likely to yield desired results. The author describes a framework for innovation teams, ranging from highly structured to spontaneous, giving examples of how different kinds of teams relate to the characteristics of the next generation of innovators. A case study illustrates how one approach using preference profiling is more likely to yield tangible results from an innovation team.