Building biotechnology teams:Personality does matter

摘要

Our study describes a naturally occurring experiment exploring linkagesbetween interdisciplinary team outcomes and personality dimensions, general mental ability,and communication type and frequency. This research took place within the context of anNSF-sponsored bioscience entrepreneurship program that engaged science, health science,law and business students working in cross-disciplinary project teams in the technologycommercialization process. Our results are consistent with research findings from themanagement literature. Deep-level diversity seems to increase conflict in teams and is quitedifficult to overcome even over time; thus, finding ways to structure teams to minimize thistype of diversity from the outset is desirable.