In The Ten Faces of Innovation Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO, describes how to promote creativity in the face of its biggest threat, the Devil’s Advocate.  He says "the Devil’s Advocate may be the biggest innovation killer in America today…  Because the Devil’s Advocate encourages idea-wreckers to asume the most negative possible perspective…". 

Kelley describes 10 constructive roles team members can play to spur, nurture, and demonstrate innovation. Near and dear to my heart are the "collaborators" who "Stir up the pot. They bring people together to get things done."  Collaborators help create new partnerships, inspire new forms of learning, organize teams in creative ways, and build investment and support for new ideas.

I was particularly pleased to read Kelley’s description of the collaborative technology they use.  He says:

IDEO has split its business into practices, deemphasizing geography and recognizing our global capabilities… we build e-rooms, virtual spaces dedicated to projects carved out on the company’s digital network.  Team members make and manipulate a project-specific Wiki… We often do Web-enabled meetings, where we are all looking at the same presentation documents.  (p. 132)

Forum One’s ProjectSpaces team management tool is an excellent platform for virtual innovation spaces like Kelley describes.  It allows team members to share ideas, organize work, brainstorm, and keep organized despite geographic location or time zone.  For our work we pair ProjectSpaces with instant messaging (so we have team "presence" and direct access to one another) and have been using ASAP for web conferencing. 

Certainly, successful collaborators should have a suite of online collaboration tools in their toolboxes and need to know how to use them.