Assessing Prototypes and Team Performance in Design Thinking Innovation Projects

This exploratory study focuses on design thinking innovation teams working on three different innovation tasks: business model innovation, service innovation, and product innovation. The teams have elaborated many and selected one final prototype in the course of the project. All but one team have been working face-to-face. By measuring both subjective and objective performance, we compare the different innovation tasks and the difference between face-to-face and virtual teams and their impact on team performance. Our preliminary study shows that while the generation of many prototypes seems indeed to support the selection of the best final prototype, it is mostly the team process which impacts the quantity and quality of the final prototype. The virtually cooperating team working on a service innovation tasks experienced major difficulties in the process, while we can report that the business model innovation team generated the most prototypes while working in a rather harmonious team.