Innovation separates the leaders from the laggards. While there’s no surefire path to the kind of breakthrough creative thinking that leads to the next big thing, organizations are on the prowl for ways to spark innovation.Vidhya Abhijith is the co-founder of Codewave Technologies in Bengaluru, India. The PMI Future 50 leader talks about the link between design thinking and innovation, and how team members can push one another to think differently.Yuri Bartzis, innovation manager at Pomerleau in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, discusses how the company’s innovation teams seek out new technologies and working processes. He also talks about one of the innovation team’s pilot projects with Spot, an autonomous robotic canine. Key themes [00:42] Building cultures to spark innovation[03:19] How design thinking can help deliver innovative solutions[04:06] Stakeholders, team members, customers—all can share innovative ideas[08:10] Innovation initiatives to embrace new tech, work processes[10:48] Testing Spot, the autonomous robot, on a project site[12:26] Buy-in from upper management key to embrace innovation