This paper is the first in a series that will examine the management of innovation by cross-functional, multi-disciplinary patient care teams in a palliative care environment. This highly innovative environment is singularly focused on relieving the suffering of patients and their socially related carers during an end of life experience. The singular focus enables and encourages palliative care practitioners to break through and diminish or accommodate professionally-based paradigm conflicts and organisational politics. This facilitates collaborative team-based efforts, including the patient and the patient's social support group, to address the multi-causal uncertainties that characterise end of life in palliative care. The continuous innovation model used in the European Union funded CIMA project is used as a starting point for this research. While many businesses have struggled to implement self-regulating teams and have invested considerable resources in attempting to gain some advantage from teamwork it appears palliative care professionals have adopted self-regulating work teams in a highly uncertain environment as the most suitable human resource structure and practice.