Some project teams visit museums or hardware stores or invite in guest speakers and performers -- even mimes -- for inspiration, Wycoff says. Or they look for an example of a company that's facing a similar issue but in a different industry or environment. For instance, participants in Partners' innovation program will visit companies outside the health industry, such as Fidelity Investments, State Street Corp. and P&G, for inspiration. Woodward can also imagine sending people to Google Inc.'s headquarters to help figure out how to commoditize Partners' own IT infrastructure.

"You need to think of your company as an ecosystem," Vogels says. "You want to leverage the intellectual power of the larger community. There might be a student in a dorm room with a bright idea [about] Amazon.com, and we'd like to foster that."

Pitney Bowes has benefited by reaching out to what might seem like strange bedfellows. After studying Web purchasing, the IT department collaborated with eBay Inc. as well as its own product development and marketing groups to carve out a niche for the company's otherwise traditional business. It developed a system through which eBay sellers can download postage and shipping labels. "Great companies get people together," Kelley says.

But diversity can also be found within a company, where hiring practices can encourage a wide range of input. At CSAA, Grant likes to hire staffers who reflect the makeup of the company's membership. "If you have a diverse workplace, you will get excellent input," she says.

At JetBlue, the company purposefully tries to hire at least some people from outside the airline industry, Thompson says. And at Partners, Woodward took pains to choose people for the organization's innovation projects who had no previous experience dealing with the business problem at hand. "We didn't want people to have preconceived notions," he says. "It's a risk and a higher learning curve, but we think it's worth it."