Innovation is a multidiscipline activity at both the functional and behavioural levels.  To this end, it is critical to innovation success to select a team that has the right mix of the necessary functional and behavioural skills.  Selecting the right functional, technical or commercial team members, is usually a straightforward and relatively eask task.  However, more often than not and to the detriment of innovation success, the right mix of behavioural skills are either overlooked or not correctly selected.  When assembling the innovation team, your organisation must not just pick the best performers within the technical and commercial departments.

These individuals performance are likely to be more relevant for the everyday value capture activities.  It is a common misconception, whereby organisations believe staffing their innovation teams with their everyday best performers of repetitive tasks will produce innovation results.  This approach has been shown to produce less than satisfactory results within many organisations.  Consequently, to drive the desired innovation outcomes, organisations must ensure that individuals with the necessary creativity and behavioural skills that will fit the need of an innovation project are present within the innovation team.  At the behavioural level there are four critical traits you must look for when setting up innovation teams.

The Visionary

These are the individuals that can see or anticipate what is around the corner in terms of trends and discontinuity in the market.  They also have the ability to articulate their vision and to sell both the value proposition to the potential customer base, as well as the potential economic benefits to the organisation.  They are particularly useful in converting those who are pessimistic about the value of pursuing innovation. 

The Driver

These are the individuals that are able to work with limited amount of data.  To ensure execution of work or project progress at an acceptable pace. They are happy to and understand the need to make quick decisions, despite possible uncertainties.  They believe in the process of adapting plans and execution to new information rather than waiting for all data to be available before progressing.

The Learner

These are individuals who may be somewhat introverted but they have a great capacity to absorb information and research new ways of doing things.  They continuously challenge the status quo with new ideas and are willing to introduce those new ideas to the innovation effort. 

The Relater (or Collaborator)

These are the individuals that hold the innovation team together through experience and charisma.  They typically are the team leaders.  They understand the importance of networking and they typically have influence within and outside the organisation.  They use this influence to leverage all available resource within and outside the innovation team.  They understand the need for team cohesion and can motivate the team to ensure optimal performance can be derived for the project.  Their role can sometimes involve bringing the driver and the learner to a common ground.

Note: It is not necessary to have separate individuals for the functional and behavioural skill set.  If any of the behavioural skill is evident in your functional team, then they can fulfill this role within the innovation team.  The objective is to keep the team size as optimal as possible.