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Productive Tensions

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

Part of Management on the Cutting Edge

Author Christopher B. Bingham, Rory M. McDonald
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The MIT Press
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On sale Nov 07, 2023 | 184 Pages | 9780262547338
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How leaders can recast innovation’s toughest trade-offs—efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose—as productive tensions.

Why is leading innovation in today’s dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent 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? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. 

Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find 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? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they 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? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation’s thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.
Christopher B. Bingham is Philip Hettleman Distinguished Scholar and Professor and Area Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Rory M. McDonald is Thai-Hi T. Lee Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
 
Christopher B. Bingham View titles by Christopher B. Bingham
Rory M. McDonald View titles by Rory M. McDonald
Series Foreword ix
Introduction xi
I Charting a Course
1 The Opportunity Paradox: How Can Organizations Capture New Opportunities Most Effectively? 3
2 Parallel Play: Why the Usual Rules of Competition and Strategy Don’t Apply in Emerging Industries and Product Categories 19
II Navigating the Path
3 Defer to or Ignore the Data? How Setting Aside Data (Selectively) Can Enable Pathbreaking Innovations 33
4 Crowd Sequencing: How to Accelerate Innovation and Address Uncertainty 45
5 Rational Heuristics: The “Simple Rules” That Leaders Use to Simplify Complexity 57
III Engaging with Stakeholders
6 Framing Innovations Effectively: Making the New Familiar, Then Novel 73
7 Product versus Purpose: A Productive Tension on the Path to Building Brand Advantage 83
8 When It’s Time to Pivot, What’s Your Story? How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy 99
Conclusion: From Impossible Trade-Offs to Productive Tensions 111
On Theory and Methodology 127
Notes 129
Index 149

About

How leaders can recast innovation’s toughest trade-offs—efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose—as productive tensions.

Why is leading innovation in today’s dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent 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? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. 

Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find 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? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they 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? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation’s thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

Author

Christopher B. Bingham is Philip Hettleman Distinguished Scholar and Professor and Area Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Rory M. McDonald is Thai-Hi T. Lee Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
 
Christopher B. Bingham View titles by Christopher B. Bingham
Rory M. McDonald View titles by Rory M. McDonald

Table of Contents

Series Foreword ix
Introduction xi
I Charting a Course
1 The Opportunity Paradox: How Can Organizations Capture New Opportunities Most Effectively? 3
2 Parallel Play: Why the Usual Rules of Competition and Strategy Don’t Apply in Emerging Industries and Product Categories 19
II Navigating the Path
3 Defer to or Ignore the Data? How Setting Aside Data (Selectively) Can Enable Pathbreaking Innovations 33
4 Crowd Sequencing: How to Accelerate Innovation and Address Uncertainty 45
5 Rational Heuristics: The “Simple Rules” That Leaders Use to Simplify Complexity 57
III Engaging with Stakeholders
6 Framing Innovations Effectively: Making the New Familiar, Then Novel 73
7 Product versus Purpose: A Productive Tension on the Path to Building Brand Advantage 83
8 When It’s Time to Pivot, What’s Your Story? How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy 99
Conclusion: From Impossible Trade-Offs to Productive Tensions 111
On Theory and Methodology 127
Notes 129
Index 149

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