I am often asked, "what facilitates innovation?"

I believe that the greatest motivators for innovation are necessity and scarcity. When there is a need human ingenuity tends to step up to the plate. When there is no need what we tend to do is pure research. Now there is nothing wrong with pure research because without that we would not have Penicillin or Lasers but innovation can be a lot quicker at the coal face than in the lab.

Take a look at http://www.fiverr.com/ . This is born from the need of a multitude of people to access low cost services and for people to make money doing little jobs that both benefit the customer but also help them promote their talents. There is both a demand and supply surplus here that creates a need and innovation has risen to the challenge.

The environment that I think best kills innovation is the one in which needs have the illusion of being already met. As example: The innovative startup that raises a lot of money and then stops innovating is a common story and many of these companies do not survive their Series A rounds because of that. Also the big corporation that is over confident and seemingly unassailable drops the innovation ball altogether (or sets up an innovation center that is well funded but does nothing useful). Even within charities, they can become overconfident. All these are the contexts for decreasing innovation.

So if you find yourself stuck in a non-innovative environment, ask yourself: "what can you do about it?"

Well, there are many ways to go and the wrong way in my view is to setup a separate innovation area in a business or charity. Instead start asking questions and looking at the world as it really is. Examine where things are scarce and how people are coping with fewer resources than you have. Look at your competition and also look at what people in your organization could do without.