Title: Innovativeness: a team knowledge and communication perspective

Authors: Debabrata Chatterjee

Addresses: Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, Kerala, 673 570, India

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the question of product team development innovativeness by bringing in two important streams of literature – knowledge and team communication. An exploratory survey of R&D teams suggests that a product's innovativeness is improved both by changing components of the product and by increasing communication between team members. The effect of changing components appears to be more uncertain than improving intra-team communication in improving innovativeness. However, the hypothesised interaction effect did not find support from the data. Implications for future research and the management of R&D are discussed.

Keywords: innovativeness; team knowledge; team communication; product modularity; product teams; product development; R&D; research and development; product components; team members; component changing; intra-team communication; interaction effects; innovation; learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2012.048807

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2012 Vol.12 No.3, pp.229 - 246

Published online: 28 Aug 2014 *

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