Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation’s Toughest Trade-Offs

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve Jobs-level genius, shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty? Drawing on cutting-edge inductive research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, we propose that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility? consistency or change? product or purpose? We spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they’ve never imagined? When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway? How can you maintain stakeholders’ trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections? We investigate innovation’s thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the U.S. military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.