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The Innovation Consultancy, a small team within the health care provider Kaiser Permanente, practices an expansive, service-focused version of innovation that is both rapid and economical in comparison with the conventional version. The team's members observe how health care providers interact with one another, with technology, and with patients, and how the patients respond. They take photographs, draw pictures, write stories, and try to capture experiences from the point of view of everyone involved. During KP MedRite, a project to reduce the error rate in dispensing medication to hospital patients, the team asked nurses what they thought was wrong with the dispensing process. The nurses usually replied, "Nothing." But when given a chance to make self-portraits, they would draw themselves with sad faces and frazzled hair. Interruptions appeared to be the leading cause of errors-so one of the resulting innovations was a bright yellow sash signaling that its wearer was not to be disturbed. KP's Chris McCarthy founded the Innovation Learning Network to accelerate knowledge transfer among peers in the nonprofit health care industry. One promising process that has emerged, Inflection Navigator, helps patients who've received a frightening diagnosis handle the consequent urgent tasks-follow-up tests, visits to specialists, decision making about treatment and care-with the aid of care coordinators. This innovation and others like it arise from a brand of creativity that transcends the media version of the health care debate.

Competitors from the developing world are rising fast. Will they come to rule the global economy? Not necessarily, say Insead's Black and Morrison, who argue that today's emerging giants look an awful lot like Japanese corporations in the 1990s. Japan's star has since fallen, and the country no longer dominates the Global 500 as it once did. Drawing on 25 years of research, the authors found that four factors drove Japanese firms' early export growth: strong corporate models and cultures; a domestic market isolated from competition; an agreeable labor force; and cohesive, homogenous leadership. But when the firms moved into foreign markets, those strengths became downfalls. Entrenched in their corporate ways, they were too narrow-minded to look for local insights, and they lacked leaders who had international knowledge. They were also unprepared for contentious overseas labor relations and the sophistication and expertise of their global competitors. To avoid Japan's fate, emerging giants must change their business models, reduce their reliance on protected domestic markets, learn to cope with diverse labor, and shake up their leadership.

As employees strive to do their jobs, they face threats to productivity from all quarters-disruptive technology, meddlesome superiors, senseless organizational practices, and abusive clients and customers. Sutton, of Stanford University, reminds us that the best bosses identify and slay those dragons, thereby protecting the time and the dignity of their people and enabling them to focus on real work. Self-awareness is the key to defending employees effectively. Good leaders resist their own tendency to exercise power: They keep meetings short, listen to their followers, and make it safe to disagree with the boss. They also work to reduce outside distractions by, for example, championing mornings free of e-mail or streamlining performance review processes. When their own bosses are the problem, they occasionally defy orders. Once in a while, they encourage their people to overtly comply with misguided demands from on high without actually buying in to them. Good bosses fight enemies. They take the heat for their teams. They have their employees' backs. Stepping on to this battlefield requires humility, intelligence, and bravery. In leading the charge to make the workplace safe and productive, however, you may risk martyrdom. Don't lose sight of the need to retain your own political power as you defend against the institutional forces that threaten your employees. And remember that preserving your own well-being will ensure that you have the energy to fight the good fight.

In 2004, Rick Hendrick, owner of the NASCAR racing operation Hendrick Motorsports, lost most of his management team in a plane crash. Among those killed was his brother and his only son, Ricky, whom Hendrick had been grooming to take over the business. Yet this devastating accident would inspire everyone in the company to fight harder, and would transform Hendrick into a wiser leader.

One of the world's most famous newspaper editors talks about leading the Washington Post through Watergate and beyond-and reflects on the future of print journalism.

In today's complex environment, the most successful thinkers are able to quickly and effectively abstract the best qualities of radically different 'ways of seeing' and apply them to the situation at hand. The authors describe how the minds of these 'integrative thinkers' are dialectical - 'diaminds' for short - in that they can holds at least two contradictory ways of seeing in any critical situation, give each its full due, and instead of fleeing from the resulting tension, embrace it and come up with a third and better way. 'Stretching' the mind to achieve this, they argue, is a cornerstone of the diamind's way of being in the world; they describe how this is accomplished and how we can willfully augment our mind's faculties of real-time thinking to achieve creative solutions.

Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Elinor Ostrom discusses the challenges posed by the world's common-pool resources (CPRs) and how to approach collective-action dilemmas. She presents seven 'design principles' for well-managed CPRs and talks about some of the key challenges to implementing them, explains what 'nested attributes' are and describing the benefits of collective management and 'polycentric' systems.

The term 'complexity' can be summed up by the phrase, 'Two's company, three's a crowd'. Complexity Science can be seen as the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects -- and a crowd is a perfect example of such an 'emergent phenomenon'. Everyday examples of crowds include collections of commuters, financial-market traders, human cells or insurgents -- and the associated crowd-like phenomena that emerge are traffic jams, market crashes, cancerous tumors and extreme weather. In each example, the precise nature of the crowd-like phenomena that emerges will depend on how the individual objects interact and how interconnected they are. In the end, the author shows that Complexity's role in making connections between previously-unrelated phenomena taken from distinct disciplines is a very important one.

In this interview from Rotman Magazine, the Wharton risk expert states that the hallmarks of the 21st century will likely be more and more unthinkable events, previously-unseen contexts, and pressure to react extremely quickly - even when we cannot predict the cascading impact of our actions. He explains the important role of 'creeping risks' and describes the three top risks for 2010, as outlined in his report for the World Economic Forum: underinvestment in infrastructure; fiscal crises; and chronic disease. In the end, he explains one of the key ironies of living in an interconnected world: that being selfish today means taking care of others.

The periphery -- that 'fuzzy zone' at the edges of your organization's focus -- is where early signals of both threats and opportunities can first be sensed, the authors argue. Their study of more than 300 global executives found that 80 per cent felt that their organizations had less capacity for peripheral vision than they needed, and the majority of leaders in another study said that they had been surprised by as many as three high-impact events in the past five years alone. They describe how 'network reach', 'network capture', 'network speed' and 'network resilience' can be harnessed to contribute to strong peripheral vision.

In most western societies, the concept of choice -- and the ability to exercise it -- is seen as fundamental to people's sense of autonomy and well being. As a result of this 'choice is good' thinking, the number of offerings in a wide variety of product and service categories has increased significantly over time. For instance, compared to just 10 years ago, the range of products available in a typical North American supermarket has increased by 55 per cent. The author describes five strategies for dealing with 'overchoice', including 'organizing and eliminating options' and 'encouraging attribute-based decision making'.

Some organizations - including Google, Pixar and Cirque de Soleil -- appear to thrive in ambiguity. The authors, senior consultants at design strategy firm Jump Associates, have a name for them: exploratory organizations. They describe five basic characteristics of exploratory organizations, including empathy and 'hybridity', and argue that by infusing their groups with some of the best practices of these organizations, leaders in any industry can dramatically increase their success at solving their most pressing challenges.

Whether they like it or not, business leaders will continue to be confronted with greater turbulence and uncertainty. The authors argue that the shift towards an environment characterized by rapid change, discontinuities and ambiguity necessitates three specific capabilities that are not readily apparent in many of today's organizations: taking an ecological perspective on the role of the organization within an interconnected web of interdependencies; helping people make sense of the events and rapid changes they are experiencing; and understanding and working constructively with acute anxiety states. They describe each skill in detail and show that we are experiencing a paradigm shift for how many of us think about leadership.

Although precise numbers are difficult to obtain, the United Nations reports that 2.5 million people are trafficked each year. Approximately 80 per cent of victims are women and girls, with most engaged in the sex trade. The authors, members of the Massachusetts General Hospital Initiative to End Slavery, conducted research in eight metropolitan areas: New York City, Los Angeles, London, Manila, Mumbai, Kolkata (India), Rio de Janeiro and Salvador (Brazil), interviewing hundreds of health workers and anti-trafficking leaders. Based on their research, they make four recommendations for global businesses, who they encourage to exercise leadership in the effort to eradicate human trafficking.

Economist Andrew Zimbalist explores the disconnect between colleges in fiscal crisis and the ballooning salaries of those college's football coaches. Many argue that market forces dictate the steep salaries in college athletics, but Zimbalist's research finds that the high pay does not correlate to performance and in fact it makes no economic sense. Colleges should rethink how much they're willing to give these CEOs with headsets.

Fresh research shows that people who've lived abroad are more creative problem solvers and effectively better managers.

Many organizations have anger-management programs for their most egregious bullies, but the reality is that the vast majority of employees will experience anger triggered by anything from a family quarrel to a lost parking space-and their work will suffer for it. Here's some fresh research on how anger affects cognitive function.

Research using fMRI brain scans by a team of neurologists shows an intriguing connection between high-level strategic and tactical thinking.

Contrary to what most people think, gossip is actually good for organizations. It can spread valuable information to employees and helps networks establish norms and censure those who don't adhere to them. So why do managers dislike it? Because it threatens their control. Research shows that the more you gossip, the higher your peers rate your informal influence.

One surefire way to avoid failure is to narrowly define it. If you care about your company and your customers, entrepreneur Seth Godin argues, you'll take a much more inclusive view.