Building biotechnology teams: Personality does matter

Abstract

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