Culturally intelligent leaders will not assume they know what will build trust with clients or staff. Instead, they'll discover what's most important for communicating and building trust.

Natural light consistently fosters innovation, as does the avoidance of disturbances from noise and extreme temperatures.

When you start paying attention to diversity, you notice it (and notice its absence!). And based on the culture of your upbringing and the culture of your organization, you may or may not be primed to think consciously about innovation.

Culturally intelligent leaders will not assume they know what will build trust with clients or staff. Instead, they'll discover what's most important for communicating and building trust.

Even an organization that doesn't do much work internationally will benefit from a culturally intelligent strategy to innovation. Working across different generations, business units, regions, and functions are all factors that can also influence the innovation process.

Smaller companies are often more homogenous. Don't simply increase your diversity because of the social pressure to do so. Instead, realize that hiring a more diverse team will give you a whole new repertoires of innovative ideas. And then develop a strategy for effectively using the diversity of your team.

Generating diverse ideas requires being clear about the kind of input needed and creating multiple ways for diverse team members to share their ideas (e.g. use more than just a brainstorming session).