Learning from others’ experiences is an important aspect of professional development in surgery. That’s why academic surgical departments across the globe hold weekly Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conferences that gather surgeons together to review particular cases and share ideas for improving their practice. ” “It gives me real time surgical feedback from my peers on a level that isn’t possible any other way. shuoshu/Getty Images. MORE

Most companies put innovation at the top of their agendas. But how many devote the energy and resources it takes to build innovation into the values, processes, and practices that rule everyday activity and behavior? Not many, as we argued when we launched the Innovating Innovation Challenge in October. Productivity, predictability, and alignment are embedded in the marrow of our management systems. Unleashing Inclusive Innovation at Cisco. Innovation MORE

One of the great frustrations of being a middle manager is that senior leaders make decisions that go against what you would have done had it been up to you. You might even be tempted to communicate to your peers and supervisees that you’re not convinced this is the right way to go. If — deep down — you don’t feel that senior management makes good decisions, it’s probably time to start looking for another job. Sophie Blackall/Getty Images. MORE

One of the biggest challenges in health care is how to provide innovative, high technology specialty care while reining in costs at the same time. Since 2013, we have tapped our front lines – our 1,500 physicians and thousands more nurses, PA’s, pharmacists and other clinicians – for ways to improve care and reduce costs, using an innovation incubator model that adapts venture capital investment approaches to find and scale the best ideas. MORE

Innovating for Value in Health Care. One service, called UpToDate , employs 6,300 physician authors, editors, and peer reviewers to manually review the most recent medical information to produce synopses for practicing doctors. With the arrival of more advanced analytics such as IBM Watson , we can imagine more intelligent system such as MD Anderson’s Oncology Expert Advisor that one of us (Lynda) previously developed. MORE

More than two-thirds of large businesses now offer disease-management programs , but most of these are bricks-and-mortar services that can be converted to better-studied, cheaper, and more effective digital therapeutics. Innovating for Value in Health Care. Digital therapeutics are being increasingly validated in clinical trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals and are available or are being developed for most chronic diseases. MORE

Employee performance reviews are a hot topic once again. Many people think real-time peer reviews will be a key piece of the puzzle. By providing instant and continuous recognition of positive behavior, typically via a public social platform, they yield more and richer data on employees, offering managers a clearer picture of a team or company’s strengths and weaknesses and everyone a better sense of how they’re performing. MORE

With scarcely any help from management, knowledge workers can increase their productivity by 20%. Yet here is the challenge you face as a senior executive: You cannot manage your knowledge workers in the traditional and intrusive way you might have done with manual workers. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo''s CEO, ended the company''s work-from-home policy to foster a more collaborative, innovative environment. Knowledge management Managing people Productivity MORE