The heterogeneity of teams in innovation process. The case of family business.

Although the innovation literature suggests that both individual qualities and environmental factors influence the level of creativity in teams, there is little empirical evidence concerning how team factors determine creativity in innovation process (Im, Montoya and Workman, 2013). In order to contribute in this direction, our paper aims to investigate the creation and management of innovation inside the family business related to the composition of the top management teams and the succession of family members inside the business. Cyclically, family owners increase the heterogeneity of the power coalition by the inclusion of the new generation into the management of the business. From a team perspective, this family dynamics create a favorable situation for the development of new ideas related to the potential that a heterogeneous group has to express in terms of creative outputs and innovative processes. However, heterogeneity will not necessarily make a family team more effective. Our conceptual model, supported by the integrative review of the TMT (Top Management Team) literature, suggests that family heterogeneity provides innovative and creative outcomes if organizations combine the right individual attributes (gender, age, educational background and experience) with the size and power structure in the creation of the family top management team (F-TMT).