Folks, as you know, I work with large enterprises in the area of global innovation. Often my clients are over 200,000 employees, and the layout is very complex. And our focus is enabling ‘global innovation’, focusing and enabling thousands of employees to innovate more actively and developing a vibrant Culture of Disruption (CofD) and Culture of Innovation (CofI).

However, global sometimes is super local! Yes, it is challenging to effectively communicate with, collaborate and co-innovate with colleagues in other countries and continents, but hey, is it that much simpler to collaborate with (co-disrupt with) someone sitting next to your office or cubicle?

To innovate, we need to have a culture of innovation, groups thinking similarly about the necessity of innovation and keeping their company cutting edge and vibrant. Hence, it assumes close dialogues, working groups and active collaboration. We find that at times, individuals sitting next to each other (several inches away) during the course of a day, not only are unaware of the other person’s activities but actually don’t collaborate together. They are in one another’s physical line-of-sight, but not in the necessary-collaboration/innovation- line of sight. Often when we bring teams from the same building together, individuals who have been at the company for over a decade have to be first acquainted before we can break the barriers together, disrupt mindfully in order to innovate meaningfully.

So ‘distance’ is not the main factor here. It is essential that we go beyond our immediate group and function to expand our reach and collaborate. Cross functional teams are critical, and yes of course, global teams are imperative. But the problem is not always the global factor, rather our mindset and how far beyond our desk, cube or office we choose to extend from to collaborate with cross functional teams!

So, local is just as key a factor as is global….As always looking forward to your thoughts!