Team Approaches to Developing Innovative Products and Processes

Sally Caird, Robin Roy () and David Wield ()
Additional contact information
Sally Caird: Centre for Technology Strategy, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Robin Roy: Centre for Technology Strategy, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
David Wield: Centre for Technology Strategy, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 1997, vol. 01, issue 04, 333-354

Abstract: International competitiveness, accelerated by the impact of new technologies, has pressurised industry to meet the challenges for higher productivity, faster product cycles, higher levels of quality and lower costs in increasingly internationalised markets. Multi-functional teams have been heralded as a management solution and an innovative organisational approach to address these challenges. This paper summarises the findings from a research programme which aimed to identify the most appropriate team approaches for co-ordinating innovative product/process developments and for enhancing their success. It is based on case studies of environmental technology projects in 25 companies in the United Kingdom. Team approaches were broadly classified as "single-disciplinary", "multi-disciplinary" or "multi-functional" according to members' expertise and innovation function, which could be more or less integrated. The research findings emphasised the diversity of organisational teams which varied according to different projects, organisational, inter-organisational and market conditions, and were more complex when several departments, teams or companies were involved. The findings revealed that multi-functional teams were important in achieving success in open markets, because of their control over appropriate expertise, even though they did not guarantee commercial success. Integrated team approaches were not sufficient for achieving susscess, although most companies regarded their teams as necessary.

Keywords: Innovation; organisation; teams; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1363919697000176
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:01:y:1997:i:04:n:s1363919697000176

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S1363919697000176

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) is currently edited by Joe Tidd

More articles in International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().