When you jump on a city bus or roam the streets off the major thoroughfares you'll quickly learn that we have as many differences as similarities. And therein lie the greatest opportunities for innovation - our different ways of viewing the world and coming up with solutions!

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 distraction, particularly of technology, impedes the innovative process. And when you add to that the distraction of working with colleagues who are in different time zones and/or who have a different approach to urgency and distraction, the potential for losing focus is abundant.

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

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.

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).

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.