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.

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).

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.

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.

Becoming a culturally intelligent innovators starts with something as basic as exercising self-control.

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.