You have a choice: create teams that feel good, or teams that push boundaries. It's tough to do both at the same time.

Getting out of your comfort zone by choosing people that are vastly different in their beliefs, cultural values and experience for your team may feel unnatural. The rational part of you will immediately come up with hundreds of reasons why it is not feasible. But will you really be able to maximize your ability to come up with creative solutions in a team full of your clones? Will you have enough energy without the dynamic opposition afforded by people that question your beliefs and actions from different, and sometimes completely unexpected, angles? While it is easy for me to suggest surrounding yourself with people that are different, it is not easy to change our natural inclination to seek out similarity. The process starts with self-discovery, with moving away from the unconscious urge to seek for likeness to the conscious acceptance of dissimilarity, finding a right balance between your natural desires and pushing yourself not to be afraid of facing challenges. Look for team members among people that are multidimensional and cross-trained in different areas. These folks possess so called ‘associative fluency,’ a quality that allows them to make connections about ideas and applications, rather than "tunneling" into specific domains when a wider view is needed. Be a good listener and don't be afraid to put yourself into your opponent's shoes - it will greatly increase your own level of multidimensional thinking, ease up your process of welcoming dissimilarity, and open the doors to generating more creative solutions.

References:

Janssens, M., Brett, J.M. (2006). Cultural Intelligence in Global Teams: A Fusion Model of Collaboration. Group & Organization Management, Vol. 31, No. 1, 124-153

Lazarsfeld, P., and R. K. Merton. (1954). Friendship as a Social Process: A Substantive and Methodological Analysis. In Freedom and Control in Modern Society, Morroe Berger, Theodore Abel, and Charles H. Page, eds. New York: Van Nostrand, 18-66.

McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and J. Cook. (2001). Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks. Annual Review of Sociology. 27: 415-44.

O’Connor, G.C., McDermott, C.M. (2004) The human side of radical innovation, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 21: 11–30.  Leon Tonkonogy