The Role of Learning Styles in Innovation Team Design (Chapter 5 from Disrupt Together)

To build teams that can successfully innovate, you must understand the diverse learning styles your team will need, and how to get the best from each individual contributor. Now, discover how to successfully integrate diverse learning styles into a comprehensive, team-based innovation framework that works.

The Role of Learning Styles in Innovation Team Design is part of Philadelphia University's breakthrough approach to innovation: one that links business, design and engineering, and delivers extraordinary results in both new and existing ventures. First, Dr. Stephen Spinelli and Heather McGowan introduce this "Disrupt Together" approach, explain its deep roots in design thinking, and show how it generates far more high-value ideas for innovation. Next, Dr. Sara Beckman drills down to focus specifically on team learning styles. You'll learn how to build a team that can smoothly navigate innovation processes, leveraging diverse skills, abilities, and styles. Beckman links phases and key activities of the innovation process directly to specific skills and styles. She offers expert guidance on designing innovation teams – and on determining who should lead each key activity, and when.

The Role of Learning Styles in Innovation Team Design is one of 15 e-chapters addressing all facets of innovation, from design processes and team development to business models and value delivery. Each is crafted by a pioneering business innovator – and they all integrate into today's most coherent, realistic blueprint for innovation. For all entrepreneurs, executives, managers, strategists, and students who want to drive more value from innovation.

Dr. Sara Beckman, CLO of the Institute for Design Innovation, teaches design and innovation at University of California's Haas School of Business. There, she recently initiated a course on problem framing and solving that integrates approaches from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving. Her research focuses on the value of design to business and the ability to collaborate to innovate. She also has worked at Hewlett-Packard and Booz and Co., and actively consults with several companies. She has B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering and an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University.