Harvard Business Review on Rebuilding Your Business Model

Mapping Your Innovation Strategy

by Scott D. Anthony, Matt Eyring, and Lib Gibson

TO A CASUAL OBSERVER, American football seems pretty simple: You run, you pass, you kick, you pause an inordinate number of times for car commercials. However, any aficionado knows that football is, in reality, dizzyingly complex. A professional team’s playbook looks about as thick as the Manhattan phone book. On any given down, the coach selects a formation and a specific play to run from that formation. All the players know their precise assignments for each play and how to adjust them if necessary.

Good coaches know the keys to winning consistently in ever changing circumstances. They need great playbooks that exploit the strengths of their rosters. They need ...