Teaming to Innovate

Book excerpt: Innovation requires teaming. (Put another way, teaming is toinnovation what assembly lines are to car production.) This bookbrings together key insights on teaming, as they pertain toinnovation. How do you build a culture of innovation? What doesthat culture look like? How does it evolve and grow? How are teamsmost effectively created and then nurtured in this context? What isa leader's role in this culture? This little book is a roadmap forteaming to innovate. We describe five necessary steps along thatroad: Aim High, Team Up, Fail Well, Learn Fast, and Repeat. Thispath is not smooth. To illustrate each critical step, we look atreal-life scenarios that show how teaming to innovate provides thespark that can fertilize creativity, clarify goals, and redefinethe meaning of leadership.