Great article, i'm a strong believer in cross pollination of ideas and skills. In my organisation there is a lot of working together with other heads and this needs to be fostered at all levels in the organisation. It helps to share the experiences and then think collectively, we have often come up with good workable and unique ideas. It is critical for product development, internal processes and many other things.

Cross-team training can really help breaking down silos. It should be very beneficial to have people from multiple departments/skill sets work on projects in order to obtain a wide view of the problem at hand. People tend to focus on the issues surrounding a project which they identify with and relate to (comfort zone), and putting different people together should be able to give a better view, and also better solutions.

A potential key, untapped resource for companies. Through joining different departments together, actively encouraging identification of synergies and understanding the roles of other departments enable a business to automatically innovate and evolve naturally.  The question is how to engage and enforce the behaviour within an organisation's workforce.