Corporate Entrepreneurship and Cross-Functional Fertilization: Activation, Process and Disintegration of a New Product Design Team

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship is important to firms’ long-term competitiveness, and cross-functional fertilization contributes to firm innovation. Thus, cross-functional teams have become popular in the design and development of new products, but there has been little research on the specific characteristics and processes of such teams over time. This research longitudinally studied a cross-functional new product design team using multiple methods. The results suggested that organizational context, specifically top management team support and organizational politics, has more significant influence on team success than internal team characteristics. While the team experienced a positive beginning with few differences among the team members, conditions rapidly deteriorated because of a lack of top management support and dysfunctional organizational politics. Thus, the results have implications for effective management of cross-functional teams. This intensive longitudinal case study produced rich and valuable information and provides useful implications for corporate entrepreneurship and directions for future research on cross-functional teams.