Creating, Sustaining, and Growing Innovation Teams at IBM

From monolithic to collaborative

In 2008, IBM encountered two shifts that required them to rethink how they would form, grow, and sustain their innovation teams.

• First, innovation was shifting away from a "monolithic model” dominated by companies with market monopolies to a “collaborative model” where smaller entities created consumer value by prioritizing relationships, iteration, and social networks.
• Secondly, millennials were entering the workforce and bringing in new expectations around technology, collaboration, and leadership.

IBM Master Inventor Dr. Casimer DeCusatis undertook a research study to compare different ways of building innovation teams at IBM. Which approach would best support the “collaborative model” of innovation and appeal to millennial preferences?

Comparing four ways to build a team

Dr. DeCusatis first identified four strategies for forming and developing innovation teams.

1. Genius Teams -> assemble small, elite teams of great individual thinkers.
2. Improv Teams -> engage in dynamic collaboration, spontaneous creativity, and team members taking cues from their surroundings.
3. Virtual teams -> use virtual platforms to connect talent across the globe and allow Millennials to operate in an ecosystem more native to their preferences
4. FourSight teams -> learn self-awareness and process-awareness with FourSight’s research-based system for collaborative problem-solving

The results

Overall, when comparing team approaches, teams trained in FourSight produced a better environment for cross-generational teams.

Preference tools like FourSight help teams gain awareness of relative strengths and weaknesses when it comes to problem solving.

Team members aware of their preferences can more easily diffuse conflict arising from different problem solving approaches and leverage their cognitive diversity for better results. 

The FourSight Team Profile helped teams balance and develop members to increase the prospects for long-term success.

Link original study >  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8691.2008.00478.x