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One of the most common questions I get asked by senior managers is “How can we find more innovative people?” I know the type they have in mind — someone energetic and dynamic, full of ideas and able to present them powerfully. It seems like everybody these days is looking for an early version of Steve Jobs.

Yet in researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that most great innovators were nothing like the mercurial stereotype. In fact, almost all of them were kind, generous, and interested in what I was doing. Many were soft-spoken and modest. You would notice very few of them in a crowded room.

So the simplest answer is that you need to start by empowering the people already in your organization. But to do that, you need to take responsibility for creating an environment in which your people can thrive. That’s no simple task, and most managers have difficulty with it. Nevertheless, by following a few simple principles you can make a huge difference.

Ever try rushing from a solo project into a team brainstorm? Switching gears on the fly isn’t easy–even when the thing you were doing alone is just as much a creative task as the thing you’re suddenly try to do in a group.

Ayse Birsel understands why. “When we’re working alone, it’s more contemplative. You only have you and your ideas, and there’s not somebody else there to judge you,” says the cofounder and creative director of design studio Birsel + Seck. In collaborative environments, she points out, “It can get competitive [and] really chaotic,” so it’s smart to “let people know ahead of time that the process could get messy, so trust the process.”

How do you prepare people for creative collaboration, though? Birsel has a few warm-up techniques up her sleeve. Here are three of them, none of which take longer than three minutes.

Those of us who work in the tech sector get excited about new innovations every day. It’s part of why it’s such a fun industry to work in. But the success of Johnson Controls tells us something important about the key to a long life in the tech sector. What matters is not technology by itself, but what technology can do for people.

Recently it seems that innovation is a buzzword on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Need happier employees? Innovate! Need bigger profits? Innovate! Need better leadership? Innovate!

Over the past six months I’ve explored hundreds of news stories, white papers, and blog posts focused on why and how leaders might foster a culture of innovation. Unfortunately, innovation is too often be touted as a silver bullet solution without even defining what innovation is. Some folks have taken a stand against innovation, given its use as a catchall strategy. Yet I stand firmly in support of innovation as a focus for making better organizations and happier teams. I believe that what is most important is not that we “innovate” for innovation’s sake, but that we create cultures of innovation in our organizations -- cultures that supports risk-taking, reflection, and real collaboration. Out of the hundreds of strategies for and stories of innovation, I believe there are ten key lessons we can draw out to support us in creating cultures of innovation in schools and districts. Why ten lessons? David Letterman, obviously.

It’s an old line, but David Skok said it bears repeating: Skok is digital advisor to the editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe, and a former Nieman Fellow. He spent his year at Harvard studying and collaborating with the creator of disruptive innovation theory, Clayton Christensen. They co-authored an article about disruption in the news industry. …

This blog post is the second part in a series that shares our reflections on building an experimental culture in governments - see Exploring the unobvious: An overview for an introduction. In our previous post, we discussed how governments tend to explore only a small, fairly predictable subset of solutions. We argued that they need to get outside their comfort zone and explore the unobvious to develop better outcomes. So how do you go about exploring this space of the unobvious?

The good news is that there are multiple ways to explore and develop unobvious solutions to the problems that governments are facing. The methods mentioned below (read this post for a more in-depth look at this diagram) are all contributing, in different ways and at various phases of the development process, to building new understanding and creation of solutions.

One of the keys to any successful business, regardless of its size, is innovation. Developing new ideas is the fuel which will keep your business up to date. Innovation will keep operations, products, and services fresh. Adding this fuel will make your business more competitive.

According to a study from PwC, an overwhelming 93 percent of business executives believe that “organic growth through innovation will drive the greater proportion of their revenue growth.”

But, what exactly is innovation? The answer to this question can and will vary depending on your industry or market.

More and more companies are realizing they must reinvent their cultures by infusing innovation into their DNA. Unlike startups that get to shape culture from scratch, established companies must transform existing norms, values, and assumptions in ways that inspire everyone to innovate — not just at the top of the organization, but at all levels.

One company that’s making headway on that goal is CSAA Insurance Group (CSAA IG), one of the insurance companies affiliated with the 55 million-member American Automobile Association (AAA). With almost 4,000 employees, CSAA IG has embarked on a systemic approach to create a pervasive culture of innovation. The tactics being used by CSAA IG are all ones that leaders in other companies can apply to their own innovation culture change efforts.

In the digital era, even companies that have distinguished themselves as disruptors cannot afford to rest on their laurels.

Why culture is so important to the success of your company.

Strategic and organizational factors are what separate successful big-company innovators from the rest of the field.

Keara Duggan, Director of Education Elements' Design & Implementation team, provides 10 essential tips for creating a culture of innovation.

Research from Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD, indicates that there are at least nine possible models of

I was recently asked the following question: How do you respond to educators who say “the idea of being called upon to develop an innovator’s mindset and to innovative scares me . . . I have the op…

I often speak of my own experience with FrontlineSMS, which took about three years to really get going, and – if I’d taken funding and committed to deadlines and deliverables early on – how it would likely have not made it that long. As a product, maybe it just needed three years to bed in, to take hold in the imagination of its users, for news to filter down. If that’s the case, then speeding up the process through an accelerator of some kind would have been counterproductive, and perhaps also have led to an early demise. Sometimes things just take time.

It begs the question: How many potentially great products have died prematurely because they weren’t given the time? Or because they were rushed? What proportion of projects do accelerators kill compared to those they genuinely accelerate?