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.

May we all beware lest our innovative ideas appear very cliche before we even blink.

Minimization is what happens when we take the "world is flat" idea too far...and act as if people everywhere are the same (and thereby minimizing the differences).

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.

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.

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.

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