The use of culturally diverse business teams is an increasingly common situation in today's world; especially as the world continues to become a global village. Leveraging the diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences of members of such teams can be a source of performance improvement that can ultimately reflect a competitive advantage in the business marketplace. As Symons and Stenzel (2007) rightly state, “culturally diverse teams are more likely to engage in innovative and out-of-the-box thinking, given their different experiences of living in different social environments.” Another piece of evidence suggesting that multicultural teams tend to be a source of competitive advantage in business is found in the paper by Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) where they state that “multicultural teams have an enormous wealth of material with which to create innovative approaches to complex organizational challenges”. They also state that “today's business cannot thrive without the creative value delivered by high-performing global teams.” There are several factors that are important if a culturally diverse business team is to thrive and realize its vast potential. Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) argue that there are three imperative steps to achieve multicultural team success; i.e., mapping the team; where team members must clearly understand their cultural differences in how they work and view success. This is often led by the team leader. Next, the team must bridge, that is, communicate with each other, keeping in mind their cultural differences. Ultimately, the team must integrate, meaning it must bring these differences together and leverage them to be successful. Symons and Stenzel (2007) also tell us that for a multicultural team... middle of the paper... &AN=25012463&site=ehost-live . Accessed: 21 March 2012Lee, M.R. (2009) 'Ethical leadership for virtual project teams', International Journal of Project Management, 27(5), pp.456-463. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.012http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.012. Accessed: 21 March 2012. Brett, J., Behfar, K. & Kern, M. (2006) 'Managing multicultural teams', Harvard Business Review, 84 (11), pp.84-91, Business Source Premier [online ].http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=22671287&site=ehost-live. Accessed: 21 March 2012. Di Stefano, JJ & Maznevski, ML (2000) 'Creating value with diverse teams in global management', Organizational Dynamics, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 45 – 63, http://www.genderdiversity.cgiar.org/publications/creatingvaluewithdiverseteams.pdf. Access: March 23, 2012.