How can we make organizations more creative?

The real question is "What can organizations do to encourage the individuals within them to be more creative?" Here are a few modest suggestions:

1. Encourage diversity. Bringing in someone that the organization can actually learn from is challenging, but usually worth it.
2. Give people more responsibility than they are comfortable accepting, and then support them as they grow (by making non-fatal mistakes).
3. Develop a sense of humor, including laughing at oneself. But discourage humor that is sarcastic and critical. Consider whether everyone "in" on the joke thinks it's really funny or, conversely just feels funny.
4. Provide opportunity for anonymous input. The fear that "no good deed goes unpunished" is alive and well until people see that new ideas are really wanted.
5. Be honest about the idea, but respectful of the idea generator. If the idea sucks, say so. Honest feedback is rare, but needed. But the culture needs to celebrate the willingness to bring forth a bad idea . . . which may find life later anyway. Remember, the adhesive that eventually found its way onto Post-It notes was really not very good glue.

Enough for now. Let's see some of YOUR ideas.