I think people make innovation much more complicated than it needs to be.

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to embrace the idea of spurring creativity by letting hundreds of flowers bloom. I've never seen that lead to anything other than cynicism and hundreds of dead flowers.

Document, evaluate, focus, test.

Think about how you will start and where you will go. Get the head with logic and the heart with visuals or stories. And think about your core customer and all the other stakeholders as well.

I find social media as fun and engaging as the next person, but imagine if all the creative talent that was pouring into finding increasingly clever ways for us to broadcast daily banality (and then serve ads based on what is learned) instead focused on some of the UN Millennium goals? The world would be a better place.

You still want to be thoughtful about what you do, no doubt, but you have to learn through trial-and-error experimentation as well.

I've never seen impeccable logic be sufficient to win both the heart and the mind.