Under the night sky, four guys in their late teens pitch the remnants of a rotted tree carcass onto the sputtering flames of a campfire.

Impatient with the fire's lackluster performance, they ponder alternatives. One suggests, "Form a teepee with the wood," while another offers, "Ball up more paper and throw it in." A third quietly decides to take a more drastic approach. He makes his way through the darkness to the pick-up truck borrowed from his father and returns moments later with a red gas can. "This should do the trick," he announces, thrusting the can's contents onto the fire. Instantly, the flickering embers combust into an extraordinary spectacle, breathing life into the fire and renewing the teens' spirits.

How great would it be to have an accelerant to throw onto your business or nonprofit for a burst of results?

Actually, one such accelerant exists. You were born with it, but you might have forgotten where you put it. It's called innovation, and as kids, it comes naturally to us. However, as we grow and develop through childhood and young adulthood, most of our mental "motherboard" becomes deprogrammed for innovation.

We learn to forfeit our somewhat innate tendencies to engage in innovative activities like coloring "outside the lines" in exchange for approval and acceptance (our rewards for adopting sameness) from teachers, coaches, parents, and peers.

Then, not until we become adults and we begin looking for work, or we are promoted to managerial positions and are seeking to hit performance goals to break our organizations away from the pack do we realize just how valuable this treasure called innovation is.

Innovation Improves Organizations

In general, innovation differentiates your products and services from competitors' offerings, produces better solutions to everyday challenges, and helps you keep pace personally and organizationally. But it is unlikely that you are using innovation as a gasoline to fuel all activities and functions throughout your organization.

Innovate to expand strategizing, improve alliance building, accelerate new product and service development, or redefine how you leverage your organization's potential using technology.

Don't "think outside the box!"

Asking people to ideate for new solutions is good, but asking people to think outside the box is useless, because the command is so vague that people don't know what to do. It also doesn't make much sense: what box, how do you know you're outside it, how do you think outside of it? Plus, you want innovation, not just creativity. And yes, there's a difference.

Though the distinction is seemingly minor, if you're not conscious of the distinction, your outcomes could be disappointing and costly. When I speak of creativity, I'm referring to the act of creating something from nothing or the process of discovery that involves new ideas or concepts generated either consciously or unconsciously. You can "be creative" and end up with nothing. Just try being creative. The first question you may ask is, "In what way?" or "For what purpose?" In this respect, the act of being creative lacks a reliable degree of focus.

The word innovation can carry many definitions, but in this context, innovation is the two-fold act of developing new ideas, products, services, processes, concepts, methodologies, etc., and then putting them into use. Think of innovation as you would any accelerant, such as gasoline; by itself, it is useless until it is combined with an "engine"—in your case, a specific activity like the development of products and services, the establishment of alliances and deals, the research and work of competitive intelligence, and so on— and you exponentially expand potential outcomes.

As a leader, you must clearly define the focus of your innovation before you innovate, because this clarity will result in better returns.

Here you'll gain easy and practical exercises to trigger innovative thought.

18 Triggers of Innovative Thought:

• Live mentally in the future: Place yourself mentally into the future and play out what you currently know about data, trends, patterns, and cycles a few steps forward.
• Connect the dots: Draw connections between seemingly unrelated objects or concepts more consciously. Ask a group to connect the dots together, so that the collection of ideas triggers new innovations.
• Wear others' heads: Go beyond wearing hats and role play as if you are that other person: your customer, vendor, competitor, or innovative thinker like da Vinci, Hawking, Socrates, or Jobs. Now what are your thoughts about budgets, time constraints, home life, health, employee issues, etc.?
• Try Biomimicry: Look to nature for new technologies and designs. A spider's web with strands the thickness of a pencil could stop a jumbo jet. Collect nature-related images or objects from everyday activities to trigger innovative thought. Example: mimic a leaf's transportation and retention of water.
• Become childlike: Play mental games; observe red-colored items, discern music from everyday sounds. Example: Shell Oil's Snake Well Technology mimics a bendable straw used upside down to suction last drops of a milkshake from inside a glass.
• Change up your space: Put up new art, rearrange furniture, or relocate yourself for a workday on a beach or in a café to spur different thoughts.
• Reverse engineer: Break down a product, service or process into its basic components, then reassemble them to make improvements in efficiencies, profits, and speed.
• Storyboard ideas: Lay out a process "scene by scene" like Walt Disney's storyboarding technique to catch details that improve and develop products, alliances, processes, strategies, and more.
• Mind map: Trigger innovative thought by writing one word, phrase, sentence, or idea in the center of a whiteboard, tablet, or other writing space. Next, create a mind map where you write related ideas in the surrounding white space. Use lines to connect the related ideas (which could number into the hundreds) to the central idea and to each other.
• Wordsmith: Play with words to change a message. Example: being pulled into a project is different than being pushed onto a project. Play with words in a title, substitute synonyms, change word order, and create conflicting statements. Try Sam Horn's book, POP! Stand out in Any Crowd.
• Cross pollinate: Taking another cue from nature, cross pollinate ideas between departments, industries, organizations, staff members, and even individuals in mastermind groups to trigger innovation. Procter & Gamble's Crest White Strip teeth whitening strips was born from the cross pollination of ideas from the laundry division which already understood the whitening process and the dental-care division.
• Observe your organization from all angles: Like military leaders who must build superiority from the air, land, sea, and space, and look at your organization from the outside in (the perspectives of customers, vendors, allies), inside out (front-line employees, janitorial staff), above (management team, board of directors), and below (theft and fraud threats).
• Think upstream and downstream: Trigger innovation by thinking upstream about your supply network and vendors and downstream to customers, franchisees, clients, etc. If you were these stakeholders, what would you want from you?
• Take fieldtrips: Visit customers, vendors, or colleagues to observe challenges firsthand. Example: Miller Welding's troubleshooting team solved a welding problem on a large oil pipeline by discovering on site that power supply interruptions, not welding equipment flaws, hindered welders' efforts.
• Be a contrarian: Refuse to go along with the crowd, become your negative customer, employee, or observer, and complain about what won't and doesn't work. This may not be a stretch for some people.
• Take the international perspective: Through an international lens, observe marketing, processes, challenges, and so on. Pay attention to new and emerging consumers, allies, and vendors in our global marketplace.
• Ask, "Why not?" Break from the norm, out of your comfort zone, and into the realm of possibilities. Example: US retailers thought shoe sales wouldn't "fly" via the internet, but billion-dollar Zappos management asked why not.
• Think ‘radical:' Ask, "What would be the most radical thing that we could do with this organization?" Example: Jenny Craig Weight Loss Systems, hired controversial spokesperson Monica Lewinsky near the height of her scandal.

The bottom line is, if you're not getting the results you want from yourself, other stakeholders, or any element of your organization from its technology to its processes, assess the situation from the standpoint of innovation.

Chances are, you can accelerate progress and gain greater outcomes, if you reconnect with your innate innovative spirit and apply it in your everyday life.

David Goldsmith, is a consultant, speaker, author, and professor who is known worldwide for improving decision makers' individual and corporate performance. Mr. Goldsmith has provided results for Fortune 200 CEOs, was recognized as NYU's Outstanding Professor the Year, was named one of Successful Meetings Magazine's 26 Hottest Speakers, and was awarded CNY's Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

To learn how you can improve your performance using these award-winning proven strategies and tactics, check out www.davidgoldsmith.com, email david@davidgoldsmith.com