While a hundred years ago innovation may have been the product of a genius working out of a basement, today it's more typically a product of teamwork. In order to achieve sustained innovation, companies must create an environment that facilitates organization-wide collaboration.

Companies are realizing that creativity grows exponentially when you get people together, and this partially accounts for the radical rethinking of the "cubicle" workplace, both at hip new companies and more established ones like Intel. Collaboration is particularly crucial to the design process, which involves constant iteration on a theme until you've arrived at its most ideal form (no single person can be credited with "inventing" the iPhone).

Technologies -- particularly the cloud, social media, and mobile -- are facilitating an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration in business. Ideas can be shared and improved upon in real-time, and the silos that previously separated functions such as IT, sales, marketing and management are disappearing. However, simply giving people iPads and Chatter doesn't make your business environment collaborative. Mindsets must be adjusted and processes streamlined. Otherwise you risk crossing that fine line that separates collaboration and chaos.

Here are a few tips on how to configure your people, processes and technology to establish a social, collaborative work environment that facilitates innovation.

READ MORE>>