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.

The better you work to find the pain point and problem facing a diversity of users, the more clearly you can DEFINE the goal when you implement the process for culturally intelligent innovation.

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.

The more diverse your team, the better you'll be at identifying what a diversity of users perceive as problems.

The very ability to empathize with a user requires that I have an understanding of that user's value and needs. This is what leads to many product fails. The individuals developing the innovation don't actually use it.

Nature is good for all of us. When we're exposed to trees and other natural settings - even within the city, it fosters creativity.

The most important part of aligning various expectations is to clearly describe the problem you are trying to solve and identify at least three different ways diverse users experience this problem. The more diverse your team, the better you'll be at doing this.