The document discusses strategies that innovative companies use to stay ahead, including rapid experimentation, making decisions based on data rather than intuition, and embracing open innovation. It provides examples of companies that think big but start small with experiments, fail quickly from experiments, and scale what works fast. The document also discusses how companies can mine internal data and online discussions to gain business insights on customer relationships and operations.

1. Innovation Strategies February 2011

2. Move Faster and More Decisively The world's most innovative companies are using technology to beat their competitors by mining data, performing experiments, and sharing insights quickly.

4. Trusting Data, Not Intuition : Is the left or right version of this home page for a previous version of Microsoft Office more likely to produce sales? The right version might seem appealingly uncluttered. But when subjected to tests with actual Web users, it performed 64 percent worse than the left. Credit: Microsoft.