Answer

Reflection on Team Project

Our Team’s Overall Effectiveness due to its Dynamics

Our team’s dynamics contributed both to the success and challenges faced during the innovation process. On the positive side, the team’s dynamics enabled building of a larger box of thinking. This box represented the summation of skills, academic knowledge and experiences that the team collectively possessed. This diversity enabled our team to draw from different skill set that led to the success of the innovation process. This is because the diversity increased our chance of getting cognitive connections between ourselves enabling us to identify the undiscovered possibilities (Frankenberger et al., 2013). Additionally, the dynamics enabled us to address the challenges that cropped up during our innovation process. The main challenge that our team’s dynamic brought was time consumption. This is because every new idea had to be discussed among members for a lengthy time period to ensure everyone was on board.

Market Pull Linear Innovation Process Model

This model allowed us to include and integrate customer needs in the innovation process. It was beneficial to our innovation process since it allowed us to freeze the product’s concept during early stages to minimize risk of unforeseen losses. Secondly, it enabled us to control and direct the innovation process from the beginning so as to attain the desired goals. Lastly, quality, safety and reliability of the product were satisfactory due to the adoption of this process. Nevertheless, the modal presented a number of challenges. These included long preparation periods, narrow evaluation criteria, more focus on maturity than learning, and low gatekeeper knowledge may result in poor judgments and rejection of new ideas (Frankenberger et al., 2013).

Other Potential Strategy

What I would have done differently is choosing a flexible innovation process model instead of a linear one. This is because this model could have been more effective to the innovation process of this product. The model requires proper interaction between research and development marketing and manufacturing. As such, the model would have ensured that the product conformed to the prevailing trends in the market. This strategy is user oriented, involves continuous interaction with the market and has increased chances of product acceptance by consumers (Frankenberger et al., 2013). Adoption of this model also lowers the risk of innovation failures and the after-effects that results from innovation process.

How Teams Contribute to Innovative Thinking and Processes

Teams are critical in the success of an innovation process. Throughout history, many great ideas have often come from half-formed and problem oriented ideas that are transformed into classic ideas by a group of individuals. An individual may have a germ of an idea but ultimately, it is the team’s duty to identify the most positive and appropriate aspect of the idea that can be transformed into an innovative product (Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013.

Teams are critical in the innovation process since creativity always arises when different unique ideas are used to create something marvelous.  Therefore, when team members work together in a given project, there are higher chances of exposing innovative ideas derived from diverse experiences. Groups give individuals multiple perspectives and views thus, increasing chances of innovation achievement. Diversity of the team is thus key in ensuring multiple ideas are generated and implemented by an innovative team (Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013). Therefore, teams form the cornerstone of any innovative product that has ever been launched in the market.