Consider one popular practice: crowdsourcing. The idea is that rather than relying on a few experts (perhaps your own employees) to solve specific innovation problems, you open up the process to anyone (the crowd). One common example is when an organization posts a problem on a web platform (like InnoCentive) and invites solutions, perhaps offering a financial prize. Another example is open source software projects, in which volunteers contribute to developing a product or a system (think of Linux). Crowdsourcing has a lot of merits: By inviting a vast number of people, most of whom you probably could not have found on your own, to address your challenges, you increase the probability of developing a novel solution. Research by my Harvard Business School colleague Karim Lakhani and his collaborator Kevin Boudreau, of the London Business School, provides strong evidence that crowdsourcing can lead to faster, more-efficient, and more-creative problem solving.