Innovation is critical for establishing and maintaining competitive advantage for today’s organizations. The majority of organizational innovation occ Show moreInnovation is critical for establishing and maintaining competitive advantage for today’s organizations. The majority of organizational innovation occurs within teams established for the specific purpose of creating novel products and services. Innovation team research to date has focused largely on top-level management teams instead of on the teams within the organization charged with the task of innovating. As organization leaders seek better ways to initiate, develop and sustain innovation capabilities within their organizations, research on such teams has grown. To date this research has attended to elements of creative, learning and other knowledge creation processes. In contrast, relatively little attention has been directed toward understanding interpersonal dynamics within those processes. This research adds to innovation team research by examining interpersonal learning and creativity dynamics that occur within successful innovation teams. Our findings suggest that successful innovation teams, regardless of team type, and organizational context, engage and participate in an emergent collective experience of deep play when they successfully innovate. A deeper analysis of deep play shows that it may be driven by several factors: an ability to emergently articulate new team norms, roles, rules and processes in a protected environment, and participant purpose and passion in congruence with innovation team mission. Further, this deep play is at the heart of the dynamic learning and creativity by which new ideas and solutions required for innovation are born and developed. Key words: Organization innovation; innovation teams; emergence; team ecology; learning; play; deep play Show less