While creativity is a key component of innovation, many leaders struggle to find effective ways to encourage creativity among team members. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn offer five tips to find "new ways to give your employees the time and space they need to generate new ideas."

Jeremy Utley is a general partner at Freespin Capital, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, and cofounder of the acclaimed "Stanford's Masters of Creativity" series. Perry Klebahn is a co-founding member of Stanford's d.school faculty and an adjunct professor and director of executive education at the Stanford d.school.

1. Ask for a lot of ideas

Stanford professor Robert McKim always gives the same response when a student requests feedback on a new concept: "Show me three," he said. According to McKim, options are often the key to innovation.

Astro Teller, CEO of X, Google's "moonshot factory," agreed, saying, "I ask teams for five ideas so consistently that teams actually try to game the system."

"They bring me four 'dummy' ideas alongside their pet favorite, but what they don't realize is this: Often, one of the dummy ideas is every bit as good as their favorite. Forcing folks to generate options always improves outcomes," Teller said.

"Our students and clients also find immense value in doing an idea quota: a deliberate practice of generating lots of options to solve a problem, instead of hemming and hawing over the 'right' answer," Utley and Klebahn noted.

One of the most effective questions a leader can ask a team working to solve an insurmountable problem is, "What else are we trying?" According to Utley and Klebahn, this question "acknowledges the need for options, while giving permission to move forward in a lightweight manner."

2. Allow failure in certain settings

Not every attempt at something needs to be successful. Leaders need to create environments where staff can learn from failures. Utley and Klebahn challenge leaders to establish areas where failure is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

Philippe Barreaud, leader of Michelin's Customer Innovation Laboratory who sets a minimum failure threshold for his innovation unit, highlighted the opportunities that can stem from failure. "We know that if we aren't failing at least beyond a certain base rate, we aren't exploring nearly broadly enough. If we don't fail, then we've really failed!" he said.

"Certainly, there are places where we need to play it safe. But sometimes, not taking risks is the riskiest move of all," Utley and Klebahn write.

3. Don't play 'schedule Tetris'

In most cases, teams end up playing what Utley and Klebahn call "schedule Tetris," packing every spare minute with meetings and tasks. Then, "when pushed to innovate, one of the most oft-repeated complaints is, 'I don't have any time,'" they write.

To avoid this pitfall, "[t]he most visionary leaders block time for unscheduled time," giving their teams the time and space to generate new ideas, Utley and Klebahn write.

"Unless your industry is entirely unique, your teams are going to face problems next week, next month, and next year," they note. "To solve those problems, they'll need space to generate a volume of solutions and to commission experiments that create valuable data about the best path forward. Have them block that time now, before the Tetris blocks start fighting for their calendar space."

4. Encourage problem-finding

According to Utley and Klebahn, truly innovative leaders never utter the phrase, "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions." Most people agree that problem-solving is vital, but "the subtle art of problem-finding is poorly cultivated," they note. "Innovation leaders know that problems are the necessary precondition to novel solutions, and they cultivate an awareness of problems across their teams."

Instead of simply providing "suggestion boxes" or "idea competitions," Utley and Klebahn suggest including a "problem box" to encourage employees to find and report potential issues.

5. Delay decisions

While it can be "distressing to leave things unresolved," Utley and Klebhan believe that "one of the best things a team can do is decide to not decide… yet."

This "counterintuitive, but highly effective strategy" encourages leaders to delay decisions about which solutions will move forward, they write.

"After sharing ideas, schedule another time to make decisions," they suggest. "… People's working memory will continue to consider the problem, often resulting in better solutions emerging." (Utley/Klebahn, Harvard Business Review, 3/28)