The Art of Decision-making as an Innovation Leader

Making smart decisions is key for innovation leaders amidst the pressure and uncertainty involved in creating something new. The difficulty in decision-making for innovation stems from the lack of historical data and benchmarks, making customer surveys and other methods unreliable as well. Decision-making on innovation differs from regular decision-making in that the latter usually involves having lots of reliable data and creating structured plans well in advance. To make good decisions for innovation, leaders need to accept the imperfection of their strategies, test their plans quickly, and focus on speed rather than achieving perfection. Lastly, it’s important for leaders to ask the right questions to make the right decisions that matter instead of choosing between suboptimal alternatives.