Cross-Pollinate

We all love our comfort zones. We love working with the same group of people and with our team. The problem with that is that we don't let anyone from the outside of our team influence our work.

In order to innovate and come up with great ideas you need cross-pollination. You need to invite people that you don't usually work with to join your team and brainstorm, come up with ideas and prototype. The more diverse the group is the better the results.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a dedicated group, this really helps with your creativity. Be however receptive to new ideas from the outside and work with people from different backgrounds to get inspired. They can be colleagues from different departments, partners, clients, users, customers, students or any other group you have access to.

Once you have come up with great ideas and ways of doing things you can work with your team to prototype and implement them.