A Multiple Criteria Model to Creating Teams

In many educational and professional environments, diversely talented teams are created to solve problems requiring different skill sets. In the educational setting teams may be used to conduct a learning project; in a work setting teams may be used to develop a new product. Teams are usually constructed from “players” in different functional departments. Because the “best” player in each department can’t be on all teams, constructing teams so that all teams function optimally is a challenging and often arbitrary process. This chapter describes a multiple criteria model for team selection that balances skill sets among the groups and varies the composition of the teams from period to period. The results of applying this team selection model to a cohort-structured Executive MBA (EMBA) program and to team selection in a Fortune 100 corporation are presented. The results of this project suggest that an implantation of a quantitative method, such as our Model III, markedly improves team performance and achieves that improvement in a timelier manner.