Provide strategic alignment. Create an inspiring vision and launch a crusade. Link the innovation strategy with corporate vision, goals, objectives, and strategy. Develop a strategic innovation roadmap to choose and do the right things.

Define the innovation process publicly. Rapid innovation requires an effective innovation process. Help people understand how they fit into the system as a whole. Document your innovation process explicitly via maps and charts, and communicate it implicitly by words and practice.

Build cross-functional expertise to harness the power of diversity and discover synergies. Develop cross-functional individuals. Shuffle portfolios. Establish diverse cross-functional innovation teams.

Establish a creative chaos environment to inspire creativity and trigger accidental discoveries. Encourage improvisation and wild play. Find the right balance between order and chaos.

Challenge assumptions. Think outside-the-box. Ask searching questions "Why?" and "What If?" to identify hidden problems and opportunities. Keep eyes open for inspiration. Brainstorm every day.

Cross-pollinate. Incorporate a wide range of styles, skills, and perspectives to inspire and develop winning innovative solutions. Encourage comments and ideas. Inspire advocates and critics. Invite outsiders – experts, customers, suppliers, partners. Change hats to generate and evaluate ideas.

Reward idea generation. People want to know their ideas make a difference. Recognition and rewards motivate and encourage people to participate and make quality contributions. They also demonstrate management commitment to the innovation program and to the employees.

Experiment to pursue opportunities, acquire new skills, learn from feedback and discover new opportunities. Create prototypes to visualize and test your ideas, inspire new ideas, and sell your ideas to your sponsors and peers.

Allow freedom to fail. Failure provides a great learning opportunity and should be viewed as a very lifeblood of success. Learn from failures,  regroup, and start again more intelligently.

Measure the progress to take a corrective action and accelerate the pace of ideas to implementation.

Make business fun to make people excited about what they are doing, working as a team, and tackling new challenges.