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.

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.

Clashing expectations are what most consistently derail any team, and especially a culturally diverse team. So if you take the time to "define" the goal carefully upfront, you've addressed one of the most difficult and important parts of the innovative process.

The best way to improve perspective taking is to see users up close.

Given the increasing diversity among customers and employees, organizations that attend to cultural intelligence are more successful.

Culturally intelligent innovation begins with changing our impulse from Why can't you see it like I do? to Help me see what I might be missing!

For me, the key question is what's behind the dangerous idea. If it's simply to stir things up and appear radical, I'm not interested. But if it's done with a quest to learn, evolve, and improve the quality of life for people everywhere, I'm on board.