Forming Innovative Teams

What it takes to put together effective creative teams in today’s society

Sam L – Research & Document Layout

Mike C – Powerpoint, Research, Presentation

Dani G – Writing of Document & Powerpoint

Brittany L – Writing of Document

Katie B – Presentation

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Contents Page Number

Step 1 Developing Everyone’s Creativity Skills 3

Step 2 Leadership 4

Step 3 Types of Innovation Used by Top Companies 5

Step 4 Cultural Transformation 6

Step 5 Tuckman Model 7

Step 8 Trust Formation 8

Works Cited 9

Primary, Supplementary Research

and PowerPoint Slides Available Upon Request

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There is a new age of business coming, where corporate organizations are realizing
how important creative innovation teams are and how they contribute to the company.
These innovative teams involve developing team members, as well as group dynamics, and
having a leader rise to the occasion to manage them. Many new strategies for creating these
teams are coming to light, like proxemics, team building and trust. Achieving these things
combined with reinventing old business processes is a way for organizations stay current.
Innovative teams are quickly becoming the new standard for staying cutting edge.

For instance, companies like Pfizer are testing out idea-management software. Tyco
electronics is also enforcing creativity skills training for their engineers. Proctor & Gamble
and Unilever are in a competition with each other to see who can build a better innovation
culture. It is healthy competition like this that can build a more creative and overall
productive environment. Managers are realizing that creativity skills training are for
everyone in the company and can encourage an environment of innovative growth. (Terry
Waghorn “Forbes.com 2009”)

Businesses have had to innovate their thinking processes and develop strategies for
increasing both productivity and profits. Terry Waghorn (“Forbes.com 2009”) states,

Most organizations go through a natural progression when they turn their

attention to improving innovation. First they say, "We need more new
products and services," and they work to invent and acquire them. Then they
realize they can institutionalize processes to quicken revenue-generating
innovation. Then a big "aha" happens, when they realize it's not just about
products and services, that new business value can come from anywhere in the
organization. There's a realization that it's smart business to develop everyone's
creative thinking skills, so they start to do a lot of training in that area. Then
they realize that senior executive behaviors can be huge enablers or
impediments to innovation culture, and they work to move them in the correct
direction.

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Team work is not limited to just the individual members on the ground level;
leadership also plays a key role in determining the success of innovative processes. Team
work is one of many vital components that contribute to success in a business where
innovation is the key definer. Terry Waghorn (“Forbes.com 2009”) reports, “Bottom line,
individual human creative thinking is the place where all innovation starts. And creative
thinking is a skill we can strengthen. But then we need to work with others to move that
creative thought forward. This requires collaboration skills and access to resources that
support experimentation. So you have to focus on improving people, the processes that
support them and the culture that drives improvement in those processes. Then you're
building a sustainable and innovative enterprise.”

The most innovative companies across the globe and have made gutsy decisions in
order to gain larger profits and encourage creativity through teamwork. Products are not
just the main focus any more. “Reinventing the wheel” is a large process in meeting new
markets. To stay ahead of the game, companies are learning that they need to rework and
reinvent business processes that may have worked for them in the past but

(Businessweek.com “Innovative 2006”) states,

Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing
business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer
needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool of new
ideas, it's about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to
market in record time. In the 1990s, innovation was about technology and control
of quality and cost. Today, it's about taking corporate organizations built for
efficiency and rewiring them for creativity and growth. "There are a lot of different
things that fall under the rubric of innovation," says Vijay Govindarajan, a
professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and author of Ten Rules
for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution. "Innovation does not have to
have anything to do with technology."

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The article also discusses the type of innovation used by top companies in the business world.
Businessweek.com (“Innovative 2006”) reported,

Take Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL), once again the creative king. To launch the
iPod, says innovation consultant Larry Keeley of Doblin Inc., Apple used no fewer
than seven types of innovation. They included networking (a novel agreement
among music companies to sell their songs online), business model (songs sold for a
buck each online), and branding (how cool are those white ear buds and wires?).
Consumers love the ease and feel of the iPod, but it is the simplicity of the iTunes
software platform that turned a great MP3 player into a revenue-gushing
phenomenon.

In a team setting, businesses were able to increase the speed of productivity at a rate that
was otherwise impossible. Businessweek.com (“Innovative 2006”) states,

Coordinating innovation from the center is taken literally at BMW Group (BMW),
No. 16 on the list. Each time BMW begins developing a car, the project team's
members -- some 200 to 300 staffers from engineering, design, production,
marketing, purchasing, and finance -- are relocated from their scattered locations
to the auto maker's Research and Innovation Center, called FIZ, for up to three
years. Such proximity helps speed up communications (and therefore car
development) and encourages face-to-face meetings that prevent late-stage
conflicts between, say, marketing and engineering. In 2004 these teams began
meeting in the center's new Project House, a unique structure that lets them work
a short walk from the company's 8,000 researchers and developers and alongside
life-size clay prototypes of the car in development.

Some more examples involve the innovation strategies of the Tata Group which is a
company based out of India. The company is actually over 117 years old and has many sub-
branches to its business. Jesse Scanlon (“Businessweek.com 2009”) writes, “The 15
companies under the Tata umbrella have produced such innovative products as the $2,000

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Tata Nano car, and includes firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Mumbai-
based IT services and outsourcing power, which earned almost $6 billion in revenues in
2008.” According to the reading, the Tata Group used a team-like council setting to decide on
the best ways in which to expand and innovate its services and products. Scanlon
(“Businessweek.com 2009”) reports,

Cultural transformation is impossible without the leadership of top executives, so

Tata created the Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF), a 12-member panel of
senior Tata Group executives and some CEOs of the independently run companies.
"TGIF's main objective is to inspire and share best practices" says Sunil Sinha,
CEO of Tata Quality Management Services and a member of the forum. But
executives also have employed other strategies to build a culture of innovation.
Here's how they did so within TCS. First, leaders approached the challenge both
top down and bottom up. TCS Chief Technology Officer Ananth Krishnan says this
involved establishing formal systems for encouraging innovative thinking and
processing of ideas.

The article goes on to describe how TCS used teams and systems to create a smoother
and more fluid process of innovative thinking and communication. Scanlon
(“Businessweek.com 2009”) reports,

TCS created multiple channels, and managers are trained how to direct an
employee's idea: incremental innovations are handled and funded by the business
unit in which the idea originated; platform-level innovations that might extend an
existing offering are directed to one of the company's 19 global innovation labs,
leading-edge research centers focused on specific technology areas or business
sectors. Disruptive ideas tend to originate in the labs, but if one emerged from a
business unit it would be directed to a lab or funded through an incubator fund run
by the CTO's office. How all of the ideas are evaluated and funded is almost less
important than the fact that TCS employees know ideas are welcome—and that
good ones won't die in a pile on someone's desk.TCS has also incorporated

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innovation into its formal annual review process, making it one of the nine
categories on which employees are evaluated. If an employee wins the company's
Young Innovator Award, he or she will see more than a salary bump. "It certainly
accelerates your career track," says Krishnan. "I might pluck you up and put you
in one of our innovation labs."

Another way of forming an innovative team is through the Tuckman model. This
involves five phases- forming, norming, storming, producing, and ending. This model helps
people overcome the group dynamics quickly in order to move on to what they are really
supposed to do- produce. Forming involves assigning roles to the members of a group. The
next step is norming, in which operating procedures, as well as standards and expectations
are set. The third stage is storming. This is when team conflict tends to rise. The conflicts
tend to come from things like perceptions of other group members, their roles within the
group, and the values of the team as a whole. The fourth phase is when we get to actual
production. This is what we call the producing stage. The team starts to get over
disagreement and focus on their work and the quality of what they are doing. The final stage
is ending. This can happen many different ways. The group will have completed their task, so
the group will dissolve based on not having a need, or team members will start to leave while
the group continues on. (J. Rica “Associatedcontent.com 2006”)

One of the biggest elements of building a creative innovation team is trust, though
such an element may be difficult to create early on. Rica (“Associatedcontent.com 2006”)
states,

Trust is necessary to form the groups and definitely to create cohesiveness, as it

pertains to the functionality of a team and team environment. This element is in
fact one of the main attributes that must be focused on in a team environment for a
common goal to be achieved.

In most cases, when a group is first forming, trust does not automatically come with
it. It is something that is generated through time and investment. This is why a leader needs
to assume their role and set some direction for the all of the members of the team. People

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need to relate to each other through things like shared beliefs before they can establish
credibility with each other and feel comfortable performing in “shared space.” One way that
a leader can start stirring these feelings in others is to first calm the uncertainty and
vulnerability of the team. Credibility may be accomplished through baby steps, including
finishing assigned tasks on time, following through on things they commit to, and staying
true to their word. Although this can be achieved over a lengthy period of time, the sooner
trust is thrown into the mix, the sooner you form a high performance innovative team.

As you can see, leaders must be very skilled in order to effectively complete their job.
Every leader has a different style, but they all need to be able to predict situations, know
how to handle disagreements, enact planning methods and be able to communicate
effectively to their team. A lot of companies offer training for their managers and leaders in
order to develop these critical thinking skills. A manager will know their strengths, but
pinpointing their weaknesses and improving upon them will be of great importance to the
team. One example of an obstacle of forming teams where a leader can step in is handling
cross-functional teams and departments within an organization. No one wants to have their
toes stepped on, so stating clear objectives and rules will help eliminate role confusion. The
leader should be willing to help with team-building, motivate the members of his group, and
be a listening ear when needed.

Reinvention and innovation take many steps to complete, but it is a cycle that never
ends. To create an innovative team, you must constantly encourage growth within team
members and inspire them to build their team and form trust with their groups. Creativity is
something that, when encouraged, can flourish. Businesses today are realizing the potential
of allowing free thought and critical thinking skills. The possibilities are, quite literally,
endless.

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Works Cited

Rica, J. “Creative Team Building at its Best.” Associatedcontent.com. 5. Oct. 2006

<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/67701/creative_teambuilding_at_its_best_pg3.ht
ml?cat=3>.

Scanlon, Jesse. “How to Build a Culture of Innovation.” Businessweek.com 19. Aug. 2009

<http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2009/id20090819_070601.htm>.

“The World’s Most Innovative Companies.” Businessweek.com. 24 Apr. 2006

<http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_17/b3981401.htm>.

Waghorn, Terry. “Understanding Corporate Innovation.” Forbes.com. 2 Nov. 2009

<http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/02/understanding-corporate-innovation-leadership-
ceonetwork-eckert.html>.

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