The fourth discipline is the innovation team. The sections in this discipline are:
1. Genius of Teams
2. Forming the Innovation Team
3. Overcoming Blockages to Innovation, and
4. Innovation Motivators.
The authors start by talking about “exponential improvement” as the overall goal of a team. Exponential improvement is the rapid creation of customer value. Exponential Improvement could easily be considered the whole point of this entire book.
This is something of a recap of earlier content, but the authors say there are four critical components to exponential improvement. You need to be working on an important problem, ideas need to flow into the system, you need to focus on compounding the ideas, and you need time and energy (people).
The dynamics of a team – communicating, miscommunicating, bouncing ideas off one another, testing prototypes – this all creates a fertile environment for new ideas and for the compounding of ideas. And with a focus on consumer value and universal buy-in to that focus, these author’s insist that any team can achieve genius level execution. This is probably a stretch since you can have a team of idiots follow the best practices in the world and not come up with shit.
But let’s keep the optimism up and learn some of the best practices for effective innovation through teamwork. Read on…