How can leaders build an organization that is capable of innovating continually over time? By creating a community that is both willing and able to innovate. To be willing, the community must share a sense of purpose, values, and rules of engagement. When Luca de Meo was Volkswagen's head of marketing communication, he fostered a sense of purpose in his team by asking its members to reflect on what being part of VW meant to them; strengthened their shared values by encouraging them to use the brand's three components--innovation, responsibility, and value--to guide their work; and built significant responsibility and autonomy into their rules of engagement. To be able, companies must generate ideas through discourse and debate; experiment quickly, reflect, and adjust; and make decisions that combine disparate and even opposing ideas. Bill Coughran, an SVP of engineering at Google, employed these capabilities both to solve the company's near-term data storage needs and to make progress toward a next-generation solution.

As the global economy vacillates between signs of recovery and omens of collapse, businesses and governments are clamping down. But the world doesn't need austerity; it needs audacity--bold, inventive ideas that take on big problems. So HBR asked experts from a range of disciplines to propose them. Robert J. Shiller believes an innovative form of national financing can solve the global debt crisis. Enric Sala has a radical but simple idea for saving the oceans. Bruce Gibney and Ken Howery want venture capitalists to bet on breakthrough start-ups. Bruno S. Frey and Margit Osterloh argue that corporations have been hurt by pay-for-performance schemes and should toss them. Ellen Gustafson says we can end obesity and famine by changing the way we produce food. Gregg Easterbrook thinks NASA must find an affordable way to reach Mars. Doc Searls argues that companies should ditch their data and let consumers direct transactions. Ellen Goodman believes we can change the way we die. Wayne Porter has a new vision for Afghanistan. Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback say crowdsourced reviews will make executives better managers. Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka think for-profit universities will jump-start the global economy. Arun Majumdar is looking for a battery to serve the bottom of the pyramid. And Eric Schmidt thinks social-impact bonds could transform the prison system.

Private moments of doubt and fear come even to managers who have spent years on the job. Any number of events can trigger them: An initiative is going poorly; you get a lukewarm performance review; your new assignment is daunting. HBS professor Linda Hill and executive Kent Lineback have long studied the question of how managers grow and advance. Their experience brings them to a simple but troubling observation: Most bosses reach a certain level of proficiency and stay there-short of what they could and should be. Why? Because they stop working on themselves. The authors offer what they call the three imperatives for every manager who seeks to avoid this stagnation: Manage yourself. Who you are as a person, the beliefs and values that drive your actions, and especially how you connect with others all matter to the people you must influence. Manage your network. Effective managers know they cannot avoid conflict and competition among organizational groups; they build and nurture ongoing relationships. Manage your team. Team members need to know what's required of them collectively and individually and what the team's values, norms, and standards are. The authors include a useful assessment tool to help readers get started.

When you're in the midst of a major career change, telling stories about your professional self can inspire others' belief in your character and in your capacity to take a leap and land on your feet. It also can help you believe in yourself. A narrative thread will give meaning to your career history; it will assure you that, in moving on to something new, you are not discarding everything you've worked so hard to accomplish. Unfortunately, the authors explain in this article, most of us fail to use the power of storytelling in pursuit of our professional goals, or we do it badly. Tales of transition are especially challenging. Not knowing how to reconcile the built-in discontinuities in our work lives, we often relay just the facts. We present ourselves as safe--and dull and unremarkable. That's not a necessary compromise. A transition story has inherent dramatic appeal. The protagonist is you, of course, and what's at stake is your career. Perhaps you've come to an event or insight that represents a point of no return. It's this kind of break with the past that will force you to discover and reveal who you really are. Discontinuity and tension are part of the experience. If these elements are missing from your career story, the tale will fall flat. With all these twists and turns, how do you demonstrate stability and earn listeners' trust? By emphasizing continuity and causality--in other words, by showing that your past is related to the present and, from that trajectory, conveying that a solid future is in sight. If you can make your story of transition cohere, you will have gone far in convincing the listener--and reassuring yourself--that the change makes sense for you and is likely to bring success.