[Olreich]

Innovation is about attention, not ideas. If you want to encourage that, you need to give folks a forum to share their ideas that they feel safe and supported. If your team is good at that in person at lunch, then having an “ideas” meeting with the folks who would be at lunch would work for that. If your team is bad at that, there’s likely some folks who don’t embrace the new ideas at your ideas forum and until you get them fixed, the folks with ideas aren’t going to bring them up for fear of looking dumb or whatever.

I’ve worked remotely and had a great time innovating, and I’ve been in person and had a terrible time innovating. It has always come back to giving folks a comfortable forum to share ideas and not rejecting them.