Article posted on December 29, 2014 by Pete Foley first published on Innovation Excellence
We tend to surround ourselves with likeminded people, however, if we really want to turn ideas into action we need to learn how to feel comfortable in highly diverse innovation teams.
Understanding our own personalities, and those of our collaborators can be a powerful productivity tool for innovation. In his article ‘Innovation Psychology: Five Personality Traits of Innovators’, Pete Foley analyses how personality assessment tools can help to create more effective innovation teams.
Pete Foley is a 25 year P&G veteran who has spent the last few years applying insights from psychology and behavioural science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He suggests that although diversity is important for innovation, the characteristic of an innovation team has to conform to specific requirements to be successful, namely, we need the ‘Big Five’ habits: Openess, Concientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, which then need to be applied in the right balance. If on top of that we use emotional intelligence to bridge the differences to other team members, we will then become a more effective team player for innovation.
Read the full article here