In 2014, the World Intellectual Property Organization (a Geneva based, specialized agency of the United Nations) released its annual report on innovation statistics worldwide. The US ranked 6th, down one spot from 5th last year and ranked #1 in the category of Quality of Innovations. The human factor of creativity is the key aspect to sparking innovation and creating organizational cultures where research and development thrive. What role do leaders play in creating such cultures? To be sure, organizations are careful to choose highly competent and educated employees, but even then, there are some organizations that just out perform equally staffed organizations. But how do the best organizations create and support this? Research indicates that companies such as Google, Kodak, Pixar, Yahoo!, Southwest Airlines and the ice cream underdog story Ben & Jerry’s, all have interesting similarities in their culture. They play. They encourage humor and creativity and they work diligently to intrinsically motivate employees around mission and goals (rather than resorting to the “old stick and carrot” approach which has been shown to actually suppress innovation). These leaders of innovation make “play” time part of an employee’s schedule with regular time for non-work related activities. There are countless tales of incredible apps, products, services and process improvements originating from this “play” time. What can you do to foster creativity in your organization? Maybe it’s time to give the concept of fun some serious thought.