Team Involvement
Innovation is a dynamic process that can be sustained through group involvement by adding value to service provisions which leads to sustained customer benefits, service quality, and product quality as organizations continue to evolve (Innovation Zone 2006). In addition, sustained innovation is an integral element in sustained and disruptive innovations.
Team Leader and Contributions
The researcher participated in disruptive and sustained product innovation as a team leader. The team leader’s skills included pursuit for high achievements, good time management skills, personal integrity and effectiveness, good problem solving skills and effective decision making abilities, and good and effective communication skills (Innovation Zone 2006).
These characteristics were identified in an individual who was selected by the whole team to provide leadership, guidance, and direction. Other team leader contributions included planning for a SWOT analysis on the product and organization in question while identifying values and norms for the team.
Team Members
The team leader selected members who were well versed in their area of participation. They were endowed with experience and appropriate skills. In addition, team members were proactive and had excellent communication skills and had a collaborative approach to problem solving.
Characteristics of the Team Members
Team members were characterized by specialized skills in their field of operation and had a great deal of respect for the customer. In addition, the members upheld customer needs and satisfaction as the driving force in the innovation process. Excellent outputs formed the basis of performance tests (Lovelock, Patterson, Walker, & 2007).
Team and Innovation
A virtuous team has those characteristics vital for the improvement of the above situation in various ways. These include the importance of teams in the innovation process. According to Baumgartner (2009) teams play a vital role in product innovation in a dynamic business environment due to the contributions that come with them. A virtuous team is composed of members with diverse technical skills, knowledge, and experience coming from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Conflict Resolution
The team leader and team members were well versed in conflict resolution as their views on conflict resolution were important for team cohesion. Allowing conflicts and personal differences dominate in the group could put their profession in danger. Thus confrontation was regarded as a tool to enhance team collaborations.
Suggested Changes
The team leader identified various weaknesses in team management. These included poor communication within the team and lack of vertical and horizontal communication within the organization. The organization did not factor contributions from all team members in the innovation process. Each member should have contributed in the planning process.
Situation for Improvement
Proactive team involvement in setting organizational goals in the planning process for product innovation could be a situation that could benefit from team involvement. Available data coupled with existing knowledge could be examined and each expertise from the team contributed positively in the innovation process.
Business Situation
The business position of the organization involved in product innovation was the key determining factor for the type of team involved in the innovation process. The team involved was a virtuous team. This was selected from a number of teams involved in the innovation process. The change team, identified as Virtuous, a variant of a face-to-face team, was uniquely identified and characterized by a critical attachment to their work, thriving on risk, and goal setting to achieve set targets.
Problems Anticipated
A number of problems anticipated included lack of team coherence where some team members may fail to adhere to team rules. Cultural issues are also a problem if team members are from different cultural backgrounds. In addition, decision making norms and diversity in communication styles such as trouble with accent and fluency and different attitudes about authority.
References
Baumgartner (2009) Innovation Process Management (IPM). Web.
Innovation Zen (2006). The Abernathy-Utterback Model. Web.
Lovelock, C.H., Patterson, P.G., Walker, R.H. (2007). Services marketing: an Asia-Pacific and Australian perspective / Christopher H. Lovelock, Paul G. Patterson, Rhett H. Walker. (4th ed.) NSW: Pearson Prentice-Hall.