Abstract: In recent years, “How to improve team innovative performance?” is a popular topic in both management practice and academia fields. Because innovation is an ambidextrous activity including both “exploration” and “exploitation”, understanding how to balance the paradoxical relationship between them is crucial to improve team innovative performance. Based on a micro-perspective of team members’ cognitive styles, “compositional approach” and “configurational approach” were adopted to explore how to reconcile this kind of paradox. Specifically, (1) the complementary effects between members’ cognitive composition and team leader behaviors will contribute to the reconciliation of team innovation paradox; (2) an appropriate “members’ cognitive styles-work role requirements” configuration incorporated with a high level of team coordination climate will be useful to reconcile team innovation paradox. Further, based on the ideology of yin-yang philosophy, the mechanism embedded in the process of reconciling team innovation paradox was also studied. To justify the relevant theoretical propositions, three sub-projects will be conducted to examine the proposed research model with both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings will not only enrich two streams of literature regarding exploration of the antecedents of team innovation and the approaches to management paradox from a micro perspective, but also provide suggestions on the innovation management practices of companies.

Key words: innovation paradox, team ambidexterity, cognitive style, team composition, team configuration