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.

Trust is consistently seen as a make or break component of innovation - particularly because the freedom to fail is an important part of innovation.

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

Developing an explicit decision-making process upfront for how you will make that decision will help alleviate conflict and gridlock when you actually need to decide.

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.

There are highly innovative companies in the U.S., Germany, and India. And there are many stories of companies that failed to innovate in all those countries. This is good news because it means, regardless of your cultural background or where your company is based, it can become innovative.

What really makes the difference in innovation is whether the corporate culture is paying attention to innovation.