When your company is known for one thing, you have to work a little harder to redefine your mission and brand. Take it from Xerox's innovation group: The company had wild, early success; so much so that its brand name became a word applying to a category - like when we "Xerox" pages when we're printing stuff off a HP photocopier.

Today, Xerox does more than make copiers. It's an enterprise giant whose revenues come nearly as much from services (analytics, consulting, and the like) as from actual technology. But when Sophie Vandebroek, CTO of Xerox, went to an MIT career fair a few years ago, she was surprised to see long lines at the booths for IBM and Google, but hardly anyone at her Xerox booth. She asked one of the students why. “Oh, you just make copiers,” said the student. “They had no clue about all the other businesses,” muses Vandebroek.

So the next year, Vandebroek put up a sign: “We no longer make copiers.” (It was essentially true; the company had shifted its focus to smart multifunction devices.) And that made all the difference. “We had a long line of people at the booth saying, ‘So what do you guys do?’”

Vandebroek is the head of Xerox’s Innovation Group, a post she’s held since 2006. Now before you think a matured brand like Xerox would employ a dated method, you might be surprised to see the kind of creativity-fostering that is more commonly associated with small startups or "sexier" tech companies like Google.

There are a few crucial steps Xerox takes to get creative about imagining new education products and services, says Vandebroek. First, Xerox employs ethnographic researchers to go into the “field”--in this case, a classroom--to directly observe how teachers work and how they might work more efficiently.

Second, Xerox engages in what Vandebroek calls “dreaming sessions” with its clients. These are unstructured, blue-sky rap sessions designed to get Xerox and its clients to think more creatively about problems and solutions. You need to “dream together,” says Vandebroek--to do deep-dive interviews, to really explore a customer’s pain points, and to think creatively and collaboratively about solutions.

“Having fun is one of the principles I always talk with new hires about,” says Vandebroek. “Unless you have fun, you can’t truly bring your intellect, your skills, and your deep knowledge to push the boundaries of the unknown, to invent and create.”

She goes on: “Being innovative to me is being both creative and entrepreneurial. And you can’t be creative and entrepreneurial unless you truly bring your heart to work, and have fun at work. Having fun is really essential. You need to have fun every day.”

Now who wants a job at Xerox?