Opinion
Embrace a Little Chaos When Innovating Under Pressure
— September 15, 2020

By Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Sarah Lebovitz
By Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Sarah Lebovitz
Our recent research suggests a simple yet counterintuitive strategy to do just that: Teams tasked with rapid innovation should forego time-consuming upfront processes and embrace a mindset of minimal and adaptive coordination.
To better understand what strategies are more or less effective for fast-paced innovation, we tracked the development of 13 health-tech projects across two hackathons. Ad-hoc teams were given just 72 hours to develop assistive technologies, such as remotely-operated respiratory devices and seizure alert devices, completely from scratch. Despite the significant challenges these teams faced, we were inspired to see that six of the 13 teams were able to successfully accelerate the product development process — a process that normally takes weeks or months — into just 72 hours.
Read the full Harvard Business Review article.
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Hila Lifshitz-Assaf is an Associate Professor of Technology, Operations and Statistics.