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Practices of High-Performance

Over the past forty years research into the performance of teams — including design-based teams engaged in acts of innovation and entrepreneurship — has focused primarily on the intra-personal and impersonal dimensions of their work. While valuable, those investigations into the psychology of team members or their access to resources have been unable to explain the factors that differentiate the best teams from the rest. Rarely have the interpersonal dimensions of team success been considered. This arc of inquiry aims to explore the critical moves used by members of successful teams in the enactment of their shared work.

The mission of the Practices of High-Performance Group (PPG) is to serve as an interdisciplinary forum for the exploration of the relational behaviors and cultural implications associated with design work. With a focus that includes innovation efforts at the forefront of science and technology as well as those in art, government, and other domains, the PPG aims to provide opportunities for people from many fields to develop a truly interdisciplinary understanding of the practices related to the work of successful innovation teams.

The PPG initiative includes periodic events, online galleries, and other formal and informal learning opportunities offered through Penn State University.