How to Kill a Team's Creativity

The Harvard Business Review case article dated August 2002 (The Innovative Enterprise): How to Kill a Team's Creativity portrays CerealCo with a stronghold in the breakfast foods niche market. The goal of CerealCo is to expand their success into snack foods. However, their dilemma is how to create a snack product that is distinctively innovative than what is currently on the market. The authors of the article propose a strategy of kindling innovation and risky business. The authors suggest the formation of cross-functional teams fuels creativity and innovation. For example, departments of a company consisting of the following: Marketing, Market Research, Manufacturing, Product Development, Sales, Purchasing, Finance, and et. al can all come together to combine their assumptions and ideologies in the formation of the product. Coincidentally,