Chapter 12 = midterm Flashcards
What must an organization consider when constructing new product development teams?
How the team’s size and composition will affect its:
- mix of skills
- access to resources
- effectiveness in providing communication and coordination across the divisions.
What is Social loafing?
When an individual in a team does not exert the expected amount of effort and relies instead on the work of other team members.
Why is brain writing better than brainstorming?
- Fear of judgment when directly sharing ideas. Self-censor most creative ideas.
- Production blocking. Hearing another person’s ideas may make you forget your own ideas, or make you follow their lead because of a hijacked idea generation process.
- Feasibility trumps originality. Teams impair idea selection, by taking decisions that reduce novelty.
What are Cross-functional teams?
Teams whose members are drawn from multiple functional areas in the firm such as R&D, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, etc.
What is Homophily?
The tendency for individuals to like other people whom they perceive as being similar to themselves.
What is the average NPD team size in the US?
11 members
What can be said about an NPD team’s size?
Teams are valuable for refining and executing individuals’ ideas. Combining efforts and expertise, groups can often outperform individuals on problem-solving tasks, implying that the team size might be related to its potential success.
But large teams can create more administrative costs and communication problems, leading to costly delays. Harder to foster a shared sense of identity among members. Increased size = increased potential for social loafing.
Why is a cross-functional team composition important?
To get a good fit between product attributes and customer requirements. Broader knowledge base and wider mix of info sources.
R&D-Marketing: input to design products that fit customer requirements
R&D-Manufacturing: Design products that are relatively easy to manufacture, to lower costs and defects, translating to higher quality and lower final prices, shortened cycles.
What are types of diversity that can help innovation, other than cross-functionality?
- Individuals who enter the organization at different times (organizational tenure diversity) likely have different contacts outside of the team, enabling a wider mix of resources.
- Cultural diversity can mean better problem solving, since multiple viewpoints are incorporated. Diversity in age, gender, and education can give many viewpoints and ensure external resources.
Why can diversity of team members raise coordination and communication costs?
- Homophily. Can also be self-reinforcing, as individuals develop a common dialect, trust and familiarity as they interact with frequency and intensity.
- Difficult to develop shared understandings, objectives -> conflict & lower group cohesion.
These things diminish in the long run.
What personality traits can enhance the success of an NPD team?
high extraversion, high agreeableness and low neuroticism.
What are the four main ways of structuring teams?
- Functional teams
- Lightweight teams
- Heavyweight teams
- Autonomous teams
What characterises the Functional team structure?
No cross-functional integration; employees remain within their functional departments and report to their functional manager. Periodical meetings, temporary, less than 10% spent on project. Little deviation from normal operations = easy to implement.
What are functional teams most appropriate for?
derivative projects that primarily affect only a single function to the firm.
What characterises the lightweight team structure?
Employees remain with their functional departments, but a project manager provides cross-functional integration. Temporary, majority of time spent on normal responsibilities.
