To manage new growth, companies always look for new innovation teams. What does this innovation team do? Do they perform brainstorming? Or do they perform creative thinking the whole day? Most of the boards of directors feel the need of a separate and highly isolated team to perform high thinking skills activity. They are like a search engine of the company i.e., unit responsible for long term and sustainable growth in the company. Most of the innovation is practiced over a company’s existing resources whether it is custom, experts or manufacturing unit. So it is a highly futile concept that the innovation team works in isolation. Isolation will create only baseless use of resources and travel processes.
Several studies highlighted that innovation processes are built on several management theories like. Luis Alvarez and Carl Andersen argue that there is a symbiotic relationship between team and performance engine. In every era innovation teams need to be upgraded to incorporate competency, new processes and new ideas.
How partnership work:
1. What is the task and whom to assign.
2. Assemble a dedicated team.
3. Anticipate and reduce strain in partnership.
How company organised for growth:
Many corporate offices spend countless hours learning ethics, business codes, and business tactics through books, papers etc. even in the time of the internet. SPP, a few year old company has seen growth nearly zero; After getting insight into, SPP found that it’s legal department has no access to many key information SPP started an online database for documents. But Thomas Ray CEO of the company, saw that project because of its complexity and inadequacy creating performance blunders so some kind of special team will be required. Thomas Ray was confident that it can be handled by the company’s existing staff and ultimately the project became successful.
Divide the labour:
While designing an innovative team it is important to assign responsibility to everyone in the team. But it requires proper cognizance in division of labour.for example team building with internal staff and external staff in the ratio of 50/50, 90/90 or 10/90 splits.
There is an issue with performance team designing is assigning a task to someone for whom the task is beyond his or her capabilities then it must be assigned to a dedicated team. Another issue with it is the relationship between employees involved in the team. Like are they comfortable in working together this kind of issue was faced by Mercedes when it was designing its first bullet proof glasses. Therefore companies should follow a path that follows them from one person to another at the same rate.
Assemble the dedicated team:
To build a dedicated team assemble your best employee from any department, or any source. But this task is difficult to implement in a company because every company wants to create their own sub units. Like genetic code gets transferred from parents to their progeny similarly company’s code is well understood and inherited by insiders. So it is natural to think about your own employees as they are more approachable and easy to grab. But it has issues like all biased towards its own approach. Also to get new strategies old strategies need to be broken. To build an effective team, selecting the right people and family. A new functional team is important. J & J has a dedicated team, consisting of a 50/50 mix of insider and outsider. To get work done they were needed to collaborate with each other. They needed to let go of their guard else it will not only let down their team but also their seniors.
Resolve the knot if any:
Mistakes, conflicts, disagreements are part of any team. But resolving them is a necessity as it might turn into rivalries and can affect innovation work. Innovation teams by nature are unpredictable, non routine and uncertain. This leads to conflict among members; leaders must counter them with everyone’s consent. To make collaborative team work, right tone and positive motivation is required over getting antagonized. They must emphasize that victory in the long run can be possible through active participation from both sides.
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