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This month I would suggest that it's not just what you do, but who you think with. We often find it easier and faster working with people like ourselves. The comfort of the known, however, could be costing us the brilliance of 
some real creative genius.

Recent research shows that groups chosen from the top talent pools within a business will demonstrate less creative flair than those chosen randomly. Therefore go Technicolor when setting up your teams. Diversity is where it's at: not in a traditional HR way, but in a deliberately mixed up fashion.

Go for conflict, go for discomfort, go for the downright weird. Put your teams together in such a way that you know there will be some fireworks.

It’s way harder to manage and at times it will feel crazy. But if you persevere and harness the brain power of such tangential sparks, and you get them to focus their eclectic thoughts on your problem, you will guarantee that as a group you will go much further than if you just play it safe and ask your ‘besty’ friends to come play again.

Chris Baréz-Brown is Global Head of Innovation Capability at ?What If! The Innovation Company

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