Team equilibrium and innovation performance

Today competition has increased between organizations and they are urged to improve constantly their performance throughout innovation if they want to survive and be profitable. However, an organization can´t be innovative if it doesn´t counts with creative people and build teams to strength its creative and innovative capabilities. Besides, the impact of technology in innovation has been widely studied but there are others major aspects that need more exploration to understand their influence in it. For example, collaborative work, multicultural teamwork, creative teamwork, entrepreneurial behavior, etc. Some authors suggest more research is needed regarding organization capabilities that promote effective relationships for innovation. According to West (2002), three issues dominated research about creativity and innovation among teams: the characteristics of group tasks and their impact in the creative-innovative process; the role of diversity in knowledge and skills between team members; and team integration. If these issues are relevant for team creativity and innovation, then frameworks and tools to configure teams are necessary. It may be taken by granted that there must be an equilibrium of roles within teams to foster creativity focused on innovation. So, in this paper several approaches of creativity are reviewed. Then a conceptual model to foster Team Equilibrium and strength innovation performance is proposed and applied through a web-based tool. A first empiric exploration is presented. The proposed model can be used as a basis to develop tools that helps teams for self-analysis.