Cover Story
Eight Essentials of a
Winning Innovation
Team
By Robert B. Tucker
Note to readers:
Robert B. Tucker is an
internationally recognized
leader in the field of
innovation, and served as a
keynote speaker and session
leader at CPABC’s 2015 Spring
Leadership Conference.
Look for info about our Fall
Leadership Conference in the
next issue of the magazine.
S
ooner or later, you’re going to be asked to lead an innovation team. This will be your time to shine, if you’re up
to the challenge. The distinguishing aspect of leading a special-purpose team is that you’re not in control—you
can only influence behaviour. You’re tasked with figuring out how to do something new, so you and your team
are going on a learning journey. The steps you take in the formative stages will have a tremendous impact on the team’s
chances of success.
Follow these eight suggestions to guide you on your way:
1. Keep team size small, even for big projects.
In Silicon Valley, the “pizza rule” has taken hold. If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, your team is too big. Lots of
research supports this notion. Once a group gets beyond five to seven people, productivity and effectiveness begin to
decline. Communication becomes cumbersome. Managing becomes a pain. Players begin to disengage, and introverts
withdraw. When it comes to team size, less is typically more.
2. Recruit your own team members.
Since you will be accountable for the team’s results, avoid having other people appoint members of your team. Insist on
having ultimate authority over staffing. Go after those whom the late Steve Jobs called “A-list players,”1 because B and C
players will drag you down every time—even if they’re talented. Said Jobs: “A small team of A+ players can run circles
around a giant team of B and C players.”
ama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz, In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations with the Visionaries of the Digital
R
1
World, McGraw-Hill: 1997.
nita Woolley, Thomas W. Malone, and Christopher F. Chabris, “Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others,” New York
A
2
Times Sunday Review, January 16, 2015. Woolley is a professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon
University; Malone is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the director of the MIT Center for
Collective Intelligence; and Chabris is a professor of psychology at Union College.
16 CPABC in Focus •May/June 2015
BartekSzewczyk/iStock/Thinkstock
3. Pay attention to group chemistry and emotions.
Research conducted by a trio of professors from Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Union College2 points to three
factors that make teams highly functioning:
i. f all of a team’s members contribute equally to the discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate;
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ii. f a team has members who are adept at reading complex emotional states; and
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iii. f a team has more women than men. Teams with more women often outperform teams with more men. The
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“emotional” component—how we feel when we are engaged with a team—truly matters, but is rarely discussed.