Serial innovation and teamwork

Before we relate innovation with teamwork let us first understand what is a good teamwork and
how can we measure it. Here we tried to measure the quality of teamwork under six parameters.
These are

1. Communication
2. Coordination
3. Team member contributions
4. Mutual support
5. Effort
6. Cohesion

Each of these parameters are explained in detail below

1. Communication

To pass information in a team efficienty quality communication is necessary. Now communication

cane be of two types formal and informal. formal requires a large amount of preparation and
planning before it can occur (e.g., scheduled meetings, written status reports), whereas
spontaneously initiated contacts (e.g., talks in the hallway, quick phone calls, short e-mails)
constitute informal communication. This informal communication is proved to be the most crucial in
a team. It is important to the success of a team that members communicate their knowledge freely.
The most basic function of collaboration, namely the integration of team members' knowledge and
expertise on their shared job, is hampered by a lack of transparency within a team (i.e., withholding
crucial information).

2. Coordination

While teams must collaborate on the fundamentals of a shared goal, many actions in the task
process should be outsourced to individual folks working on parallel sub - tasks. The coordination
and synchronization of these individual contributions is a crucial component of team cooperation
quality. Teams must agree on shared timetables, budgets, and deliverables in order to accomplish
this successfully and efficiently. Coordination entails the teams developing and agreeing on a shared
task-related objective structure with sufficiently specified sub-goals for each team member, free of
gaps and overlaps.

3. Team member contributions

It is crucial to the quality of cooperation that every team member is able to offer all task-relevant
knowledge and expertise to the team. It would contradict the point of teams if certain team
members could not put in their thoughts and ideas because others were dominating talks and
decision-making processes. Therefore, it is regarded crucial to collaboration quality that
contributions to the team task be balanced with respect to each member's individual expertise and
experience. While not everyone must bring in, the exact same quantity of ideas, no one should be
constrained in presenting and providing important expertise to the team.

4. Mutual support
Intensive cooperation of persons relies upon a cooperative rather than a competitive frame of mind.
Without doubting the motivating power of competition in the case of autonomous individual
activities, for interdependent tasks, mutual support is more productive than are the forces of rivalry.
Thus, team members working on a same objective should demonstrate mutual respect, give aid
when required, and develop other team members' ideas and contributions, rather than striving to
outdo each other. Competitive behaviors in a team lead to mistrust and dissatisfaction, while mutual
support supports the integration of team members' skills and is thus a vital part of the quality of
cooperation in teams.

5. Effort

Team standards regulating the work of team members are of special relevance to the collaborative
team process. Workload sharing and prioritisation of the team's job above other duties are markers
for the effort team members expend on the shared task. In order to achieve excellent teamwork
quality and minimize disagreement among team members, it is vital for everyone in the team to
know and accept the work rules relating proper effort. A consistently high degree of effort by all
team members is important to the quality of cooperation

6. Cohesion

Team cohesiveness refers to the extent to which members of the team aspire to stay in the team.
Good cooperation can scarcely be accomplished without an acceptable amount of cohesiveness. If
team members lack a feeling of unity and belonging, if there is no motivation to keep the team
continuing, then extensive cooperation appears improbable. An acceptable amount of cohesiveness
is important to retain a team, to participate in cooperation, and therefore to develop the framework
for excellent teamwork quality.

Quality Teamwork and Innovation

High levels of teamwork (i.e., teamwork quality), however, are not certainly associated with greater
team performance in innovative projects, as this connection may be mediated by job characteristics
such as task uniqueness, difficulty, and unpredictability (Gladstein, 1984; Stewart & Barrick, 2000).
(Gladstein, 1984; Stewart & Barrick, 2000). These task features combine to what has been dubbed
task innovativeness (Adler, 1995; Olson, Walker, & Ruekert, 1995). (Adler, 1995; Olson, Walker, &
Ruekert, 1995). As earlier studies suggest, there exist projects of different innovativeness even in
such usually innovative domains as R&D, and the “fit” between innovation performance and the
integration mechanism selected indicates a strong link with project performance (Keller, 1994; Olson
et al., 1995). (Keller, 1994; Olson et al., 1995). This offers credence to the view that the choice of
integration mechanism (e.g., schedules and plans vs teams) should suit the requirement for
integration as indicated by the novelty, complexity, and uncertainty of the work at hand (Nadler &
Tushman, 1988). (Nadler & Tushman, 1988). Hence, greater quality of cooperation within the project
teams is not certainly always better, but the presumed positive association between teamwork
quality and performance relies on the innovativeness of the project at hand.

Does good teamwork mean higher innovation ?

While team members need to work with each other in a direct and interactive form on basic parts of
a shared job, many actions in the task process may be outsourced to individual members working
simultaneously on subtasks. One crucial component of the quality of cooperation in teams is the
harmony and sync of these individual contributions. To this aim, teams need to agree on similar
work structures, timetables, budgets, and deliverables, including a common task-related objective
structure with distinct sub-goals for each team member, minimizing gaps and overlaps. A lack of
cooperation within the team leads to redundant efforts (overlaps) and/or missing responsibility for
specific sub-tasks and activities (gaps) in the task process and therefore impedes the team's capacity
to accomplish its project within particular time and budget restrictions.

As this connection seems common to all group project, teamwork quality is more important in cases
of highly innovative tasks, where the novelty, complexity, and ambiguity of the job makes the
integration more critical due to unforeseen and rapidly changing task environments (Hoegl,
Parboteeah, & Gemuenden, 2003). (Hoegl, Parboteeah, & Gemuenden, 2003). More creative
activities produce higher uncertainty because there are more sources of unpredictability and “more
potential disruptions connected with the coordination of interdependent elements of the project”
(Sicotte & Langley, 2000, 3). (Sicotte & Langley, 2000, 3). In addition, more inventive activities
frequently entail foreign technologies and, therefore, it is more difficult to depend on prior
experiences to tackle new difficulties. The absence of “reference points” makes it tougher to
establish a set of processes to deal with new challenges. Thus, in more creative projects there are
rapid changes, a lack of understanding about future events and implications of particular actions,
uncertainty around the nature of tasks to be done and issues to be handled. We propose that these
elements combine to make collaboration quality crucial.

Due to the rapid changes inherent in highly inventive activities (e.g., team members experiencing
new concerns and problems, need to reassign work, etc.), it is vital for team members to interact to
a high degree to cope with these frequent changes. Team members need to meet often to exchange
information on how to perform the next assignment, to find out about what other team members
are encountering, to deal with disturbances, and finally, to guarantee that the project is on track
(Keller, 1994). (Keller, 1994). In addition, high levels of collaboration provide opportunities for team
members to deal with uncertainties by allowing team members not only to establish objectives and
plan courses of actions to reach such objectives but also to regularly revise these plans in the face of
uncertainty (Daft & Lengel, 1986). (Daft & Lengel, 1986).

In contrast, in somewhat novel projects where the task process is evident from the start, the team
(or team leader) may define a project plan with milestones, task interfaces between persons, as well
as individual deliverables, from the beginning of the project. Tasks may be allocated to people and
expectations for performance can be identified. Given such a more customizable job environment,
excellent collaboration quality is less important. The project offers less technological uncertainties
and unexpected adjustments and adaptations are not as frequent as in highly creative projects
making rigorous cooperation less vital for project success. In contrast to highly creative projects,
where excellent collaboration quality is important to cope with the ambiguities and uncertainties of
the project, a moderately innovative project includes a relatively known and programmable
environment. Thus, if teams do participate in high degrees of collaboration in somewhat novel
projects (e.g., software upgrade/customization projects), it may be resulting in little or no
incremental advantage to the team's schedule and budget performance (Sicotte & Langley, 2000).
(Sicotte & Langley, 2000). With such projects, team members are more likely to be able to plan the
project at the start and then focus on executing that plan, rather than needing to reassess and
update their work approach and project planning regularly, as is more often the case in highly
inventive projects