nice article. Just a question for you, if I understood well your interest on this topic is because you “think some of the most innovative teams in today’s world will be both multidisciplinary and cross-cultural”. However while reflecting on this, do you think that innovation and effectiveness will be based on those elements? Innovation and effectiveness in persons or teams has been present independently of the combination of those factors, don’t you think? And/or the attitudes that the authors mentioned about team work I do not see them exclusive for multidisciplinary or cross-cultural teams.Then, if I understand well, imho the most important element for any team is each on of its members, or what will be your opinion?

I like your questions - thanks for giving me a chance to explain myself a little better. I definitely do not think that you need a team to be either multidisciplinary or intercultural as a pre-requisite for innovation and creativity. In fact, in some cases, I imagine it makes it more difficult (if there is not a good level of trust established, when ethnocentrism takes over, etc).

But I do think that one thing that sparks creativity and innovation is when you can see the same thing, but in a new way - when you make new connections. The innovation/ creativity can be sparked by people who offer multiple different perspectives, and by having a team that is multidisciplinary and/or multicultural you provide a rich source of these multiple perspectives, of different ways to view/ experience/ problem solve in the same scenario.

So I am curious - how do you structure a team (and communication within that team) in a way that you can tap into the rich source of multiple perspectives and expertise areas, so trust and rapport is established and multiple conflicting viewpoints are valued, where differences in perspectives add additional value to the end results, where miscommunication is minimized and innovative potential is maximized?