The construct of teamwork has been of considerable interest to researchers and practitioners across domains. The literature on teams includes many studies related to team composition, processes, and roles, but it pays much less attention to how teams learn and innovate. Studies examining how cross-disciplinary teams interact during projects are even less common. The study examined here was conceived to fill the need for a theoretical framework to describe how individuals from different disciplines evolve into a team that creates new forms of knowledge and innovative solutions or products. The framework, which was validated in a university service-learning program with over 25 teams, is a comprehensive theory merging two existing team models within a sociocultural system framework emphasizing the mediating aspects of the collective team and context. The theoretical foundations, the definitions, and dimensions of the framework are presented in this article. (Contains 2 figures.)