Paradoxes in Cross-functional Innovation Teams: How Designers Transcend Individual Level Tensions to Enhance Collaboration

Design has emerged as critical to successful innovation yet integrating design preferences with those of other disciplines proves challenging. This research aims to understand how individual designers experience interdisciplinary collaboration in the context of a cross-functional innovation team, and subsequently how they work to manage collaborative tensions. A qualitative, abductive approach has been taken, through n=58 semi-structured interviews with designers and non-designers working in cross-functional innovation teams. Following existing research in the field, a paradox perspective has been adopted to investigate collaboration tensions. It was found that designers experience paradoxical tensions associated with paradoxes of performing and belonging when collaborating with non-designers, which are brought to saliency due to factors in the cross-functional team environment. It was found that designers may interpret paradoxical tensions through the lens of their design remit, navigating paradoxical collaboration tensions by engaging as either a designer or a team member (or ideally, both). In doing so designers were able to both demote (relent on) and promote (advocate for) their design remit in relation to their team member role. Practices were identified that enabled designers to confront, and ultimately transcend paradoxical collaboration tensions. Practices which did not enable the transcendence of paradoxical collaboration tensions were also identified. This research contributes to theory by extending our understanding of how paradoxes emerge for designers in cross-functional innovation teams, and how these paradoxes can be engaged at the individual level. In particular, this research introduces a new paradoxical framing: Demotion vs Promotion. Further, it offers practical suggestions to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration by designers to improve innovation outcomes.