This paper describes and put into an international perspective an untraditional innovation and development project that was initiated by the Capital Region of Denmark in August 2011. The on-going project aims at finding new and innovative ways of solving in-door climate problems in houses situated on contaminated soil and/or groundwater. The project was instigated based on the fact that traditional innovation processes did not provide satisfactory innovative results. Consequently the project named NYMIND was launched by the Capital Region of Denmark addressing three key points: Firstly, the project should be based on multidisciplinary university research. Secondly, scientists with a known capacity to innovate and an expertise outside the field should be connected to the process in order to enhance innovation. Thirdly, different process tools should be applied and tested during the innovation process including the use of art and other creative tools. The project has now reached a decisive stage where three pre-project tracks are now being implemented as cross-university projects. In conclusion, the project NYMIND has so far been successful and resulted in a number of important lessons learned. These are discussed and put into an international and general perspective in this paper.