"I would say that at least once a month, I have an idea, big or small, that I present to my manager. My most recent innovation was (give a detailed example)."

"I am always thinking of new ways to increase productivity and improve the methods I use to complete my work. The teams I manage use agile methodologies for product development. It is part of our process to reflect daily and at the end of each iteration. I toss out ideas to help us improve our work often during these sessions.

For example, one of my roles is to remove roadblocks for others. Last week I set up a knowledge-sharing opportunity with friends at another company to help my team gather some expertise we needed to move forward. It is pretty unheard of at my company to talk with this competitor, but we were able to share knowledge that was not proprietary, and everyone got something out of it."

Think of a time you had a chance to make a difference by changing a process or procedure, and share it with the interviewer. This will support your answer to their question.

"One of the product development concepts I learned in college was continual improvement. Processes are fluid and small changes can reduce waste and improve performance. I try to look at anything I do in the workplace through that lens. I reflect weekly to think about what I could improve, or what I have observed others doing well that I could incorporate into my approach.

For example, I asked if I could be included on my team's daily status call when I was an intern. I was not originally invited, but I was often asked to take on tasks that were discussed in the meeting. My teammates would then have to bring me to up speed on what was discussed.

The process was inefficient and attending the meetings sped things up a lot. I was able to stay in the loop and regularly offered to take on tasks that I knew I could handle. I took notes for the team and they found that to be helpful as well."