Process by which an idea or invention is translated into a good or service for which people will pay. To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need Innovative and creative ideas are at the heart of most successful businesses. Ideas by themselves, however, have little value. They need to be developed, turned into innovative products or services and commercialized successfully to reap the benefits of innovation and creativity.

Ten Principles for creating the highest performance teams and team innovation:
 

1. Establish the reasons and objectives of forming a team. Create a concise team vision and mission statement that is crisp and well understood.

2. Recruit the best team players who will be the most adept at achieving the said team objectives, vision and mission. Find employees both from within the organization through your own network of friends, peers and managers, and externally through the best recruiters available.

3. Establish clear, participatory, effective and elevating team goals and plans, preferably using SMART system. Ensure that the team’s plans and future direction are clear and supported, the team is kept informed of the ongoing progress, quality standards and effectiveness set, and there is complete commitment from team members towards achieving these objectives.

4. Articulate and communicate team task functions and relationship functions, and help the team understand the differences through examples. Organize and lead the team so that the team coordinates the efforts and cooperates well. Create a high degree of trust and confidence among the team members, ensure that the team members participate fully and communicate openly making sure that everyone is always included, encourage different viewpoints and foster diversity in thought and members, and build camaraderie, closeness and friendship within the team.

5. Develop healthy and productive group and meeting norms, grow team cohesiveness by building collaboration, and manage social loafing consequences. Make decisions by consensus after seeking opinions from each team member, help the team towards making its own good decisions, resolve problems and find solutions through mutual effort and open communications, and evaluate team behaviors and perceptions openly.

6. Proactively manage team behaviors and conflicts that could either encourage or harm member relations, and regulate situations where individual needs are not satisfied. The emphasis is on “proactively” managing conflicts. A high performing team will have conflicts, openly and often. Conflicts are a healthy sign of a team cooperating and communicating ideas frequently. The manager should create sound conflict resolutions techniques wherein the conflicts are addressed in a timely manner, and conflicts remain rooted in problems and issues, and not about members.

7. Cultivate and unleash Group Creativity and Innovation. A leader becomes indispensable and important to the organization when they can develop creativity throughout the organization--in their team, and in the processes the leader uses to tap and leverage that widespread creativity. What processes drive Group Creativity and Innovation? The team leader leverages Group Creativity techniques including Basic Brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique (NGT), and NGT-Storming. A creative team leader will always ask a lot of questions, never judges, encourages free-wheeling, goes for quantity (of ideas), and promotes piggybacking during the group creativity meetings. Finally, a witty quote about change, and stepping into the team member’s offices and asking a simple question: “any creative ideas today?” will always encourage creativity and innovation among the team.

8. Analyze, update and maneuver team communication according to the twelve categories comprising Bales’ Interaction Analysis. Bales’ Interaction Analysis allows the manager to review the team’s member communications in four categories: Positive reactions, Attempted answers, Questions and Negative reactions. By analyzing this once every few months, the leader can not only get insight on how the team communicates, but also provide individual members feedback. If the overall communications are moving towards increasing Questions and Negative reactions, the leader can take appropriate steps to enhance the communication flow.

9. Create a Team Assessment Inventory on the team’s general productivity and climate, team goals, processes and procedures, and member relationships every three months to analyze and calibrate the team performance. This is very important if the team is going to be working together on projects for the long term. Also, this would provide the manager a self-assessment on how well the term is performing.

10. Have fun!! Create an environment wherein the team members enjoy their work, and the team morale remains high. The leader needs to exude excitement, and inject that passion so that the team members also work with high degree of energy and excitement. Every month or once every few months, the leader should take time to enjoy the achievements, and plan fun activities with the team.