How to Create High-performing Innovation Teams

Effective team work is essential if innovation projects are to succeed. How to create high-performing innovation teams provides practical guidance and advice on how to create high-performing teams regardless of type or size of company, organization, or public institution. It offers the reader pivotal tools and insights to use in practice.

Both the theory and practice for creating high-performing innovation teams are discussed and new tools and insights are provided for managers, consultants, and academics. It answers the call for rapid innovation to respond to the increasingly changing market and to shorter product life cycles.

How to create high-performing innovation teams addresses specifically the factors that enable innovation work from the perspective of the organization, the innovation team, and its members. In addition to co-located innovation teams, the book also discusses the differences among global organizations and what to consider in the creation of global high-performing innovation teams.

Mikael Johnsson earned his PhD 2016 at Blekinge Institute of Technology, where he developed knowledge on innovation team and factors enabling innovation team’s work. As a result, he developed methodologies and knowledge regarding how to create high-performing innovation teams. Currently, his research is on the implementation of innovation teams in various organizations, collaborating with consultancy firms while doing so. Additionally, his research is extended to explore how to create distributed high-performing innovation teams, which he does in collaboration with large global companies.

Based on his research, he published the book “High-performing innovation teams – step by step” in 2018, which is a hands-on book in Swedish on how to plan for and create innovation teams that have the potential to become high-performing.

Mikael is also lecturing at Mälardalen University, where he teaches in product development, mainly on master level, using innovation management- and the design thinking-perspective as core. Alongside his academic work, Mikael is also a management consultant, with innovation management as his main field, supporting organizations to develop their knowledge on how innovation teams can be created that take responsibility for, and are independently active in developing products and services within the organisation they work for. In addition to the theoretical knowledge that Mikael has gained, he also has practical experience. He started developing his own products back in 2002. He has several products on the market and filed a few patents in various product fields as well.