The first place to start to foster an innovative workplace is with top managers. Also essential to creating a climate that allows innovation to happen are being open and listening to new ideas, tolerating risk taking, and fostering trust and respect for others in the workplace. Innovation is nourished by both the social and physical environments in the workplace. A great idea contributed by an individual can be improved by the thinking and contributions of a group. But for ideas to be shared, people need to know they'll be heard and respected.
Physical environment plays a part as well.
Ideally, individual offices would be clustered in neighborhoods surrounding a team meeting room or table. The discussion that occurs between diverse companies in diverse industries is the richest part of the program. Professionals at Amgen, Baxter, and Abbott have used the Diamond Solution Process to generate breakthrough technologies. IDEO , which serves the innovation needs of clients as diverse as consumer goods manufacturers, movie studios, and automobile manufacturers, also focuses heavily on medical device industry projects. For these diverse clients, IDEO staff consult their Technology Box, in which they've collected every interesting technology they've heard of, to see how these technologies may apply to the project at hand.