HBR's 10 Must Reads 2023

Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making

by Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards, and Taran Swan

TO STAY COMPETITIVE, TODAY’S BUSINESS leaders are investing millions in digital tools, agile methodologies, and lean strategies.

Too often, however, those efforts produce neither the breakthrough operational processes nor the blockbuster business models companies need—at least not before their competitors introduce their own advances. And a key culprit is the inability to make quick and effective innovation decisions.

The discovery-driven innovation processes companies now rely on involve an unprecedented number of choices, from big go/no-go gates that govern which ideas are pursued to countless decisions about how to conduct experiments, what data ...