The role of personality in new product development team performance

Although the role of personality in team performance is not well understood, research suggests that personality plays a critical role in the effective performance of teams. Personality variables should be especially important for new product development (NPD) teams which typically include highly coordinated activities among multidisciplinary members. The five-factor model provides a consistent structure for understanding how personality relates to different kinds of behavior and is used as a framework for reviewing literature related to team performance. The same model is then used to form a set of research propositions that can serve to guide future research on the role of personality in NPD teams. Because the literature suggests that the role of personality is dependent upon the type of task involved, we differentiate our research propositions for two specific types of new product development: incremental innovation and radical innovation. We offer research propositions for the average level of each of the five-factor model variables and performance in the two types of teams. Finally, we suggest a set of research propositions for the effect of heterogeneity of personality on performance in radical and incremental innovation teams.