Diversity as a Potential for Innovation

Through their diversity of competences and knowledge, heterogeneous new product development teams have a high potential for innovativeness. On the one hand, team diversity helps to deal with complex tasks and to improve the development of new products. On the other hand, a high level of diversity can lead to communication and cooperation barriers within the team, obstructing teamwork and hence hindering creativity and innovativeness. Therefore, finding the right constellation in this conflict between diversity and communication - exploiting the benefits whilst avoiding the hindrances - contributes to helping develop the full potential for innovation. This paper describes the different influences of diversity on the innovativeness of NPD teams and gives practical implications for managing heterogeneous teams.