INNOVATING WITH COMPETENCIES Behavioral competencies for developing innovative successful products

The capability to innovate is fundamental for companies that want to stay competitive in the market maintaining their profit. Many factors influence the innovative potential of NPD teams. Can Emotional and Social Competencies increase the capability of innovating and developing new successful products? This paper aims at answering this crucial question. In the first part different definitions of innovation are provided and categories in which innovation is classified are further expounded. After having pointed out that the focus is on product innovation, the concept of Open Innovation is analyzed together with Stage-Gate NPD process and the different kind of NPD teams. In the second part the focus of the discussion is on the Emotional and Social Competency expounding the results of different studies on this subject. The codebook developed by Boyatzis in 1982 integrated by the competencies of the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory is in particular examined being the starting point for the empirical study. In the third part the methodology adopted in this empirical study is described in all its phases. In particular, Behaviour Events Interviews were conducted in order to find competencies that team members demonstrated during the NPD process whereas a Repertory Grid has been created in order to classify them in best performers and average/poor performers. The gathered data are studied in the fourth part in which the link between team members’ competencies and their performance during the NPD process is analysed, showing how Social and Emotional competencies actually influenced the capability to innovate and to developed successful new products.