Businesses collect mountains of data and spend vast sums storing and protecting them. Yet excess data carry a steep price tag for storage, maintenance, and protection, and incalculable potential costs in terms of liability. Similarly, most companies guard their intellectual property at great expense. Yet many efforts to safeguard intellection property are ineffectual or even counterproductive – depressing the value of that which they hope to protect.

There are no guarantees when it comes to running a business. But the best entrepreneurs I know follow these guidelines.

The economic slump offers business leaders a chance to more effectively reward talented employees by emphasizing nonfinancial motivators rather than bonuses. A recent McKinsey survey indicates that executives find some nonmonetary rewards motivate employees better than cash bonuses do. See what they are, then let us know what's working in your organization.

Risk-assessment processes typically expose only the most direct threats facing a company and neglect indirect ones that can have an equal or greater impact.

How the military can help you learn from your mistakes.

Customers continue to demand greater value at ever-lower prices. But for many companies, the ability to produce savings through more traditional cost-cutting measures is nearly exhausted. The solution: Combine cost-cutting initiatives with design and development activities, using cost-driven product and service innovations to create new streams of profitable growth.

Find a bright spot and clone it.

That's the first step to fixing everything from addiction to corporate malaise to malnutrition. A problem may look hopelessly complex. But there's a game plan that can yield movement on even the toughest issues. And it starts with locating a bright spot -- a ray of hope.

Designing a manufacturing network entails devising and managing flows of innovation and know-how—not just determining what to produce and where—and organizing the resulting logistics flows.

No company can afford a flawed understanding of customer profitability, least of all in a recession when the margin for error (as well as profit) is whisper-thin. The flip side is that improvements in this area can be a very effective way of bolstering the bottom line — and companies can often make those improvements with only a modest initial investment.

Collaboration has become a hot buzzword. Tear down silos. Get employees to talk to each other from separate cubicles, separate countries. Partner with suppliers and customers to bolster innovation. The mandate for CEOs and senior executives seems clear: You should get your employees to collaborate more.

Guess what? This conventional wisdom is dead wrong: Collaboration is not necessarily a good thing, and more of it is not always better. As a leader, you must distinguish between the right and the wrong way to collaborate in your company. Collaboration can have a tremendous positive impact on sales and profits, provided you can do it right.

After 15 years of research with companies in various industries, I have developed a simple yet powerful approach. It is called “disciplined collaboration,” and its purpose is to help you avoid the traps of collaboration and reap big results for your company.

Program management is now the preferred vehicle for bringing about major organizational and strategic change in many sectors. Unfortunately, former project managers entrusted with major programs are frequently not up to the task.

Whether you are seeking to attract and retain talent, generate support for a new business imperative, or to maintain friendly labor relations, an effective Employee Engagement program is one that is built on the five C's: clarity, consistency, context, customization and conversation.

An entrepreneur's guide to offering trade credit, crafting a credit application, and evaluating a customer's credit-worthiness.

Could a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity? In some employment environments, the answer is yes, according to Wharton management professor Adam Grant. Grant has devoted significant chunks of his professional career to examining what motivates workers in settings that range from call centers and mail-order pharmacies to swimming pool lifeguard squads. In all these situations, Grant says, employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don't; they are vastly more productive, too.

Given the magnitude of the overall organizational impact, it is surprising how few companies invest in helping their precious leadership assets to succeed during transitions—the most critical junctures in their careers. A few companies explicitly train their managers how to take charge. More common are “on-boarding” programs that introduce outside hires to the strategy, businesses, and culture of the company. While useful, such programs seldom provide systematic guidance on the process of managing a successful transition. And the vast majority of companies do not provide any support at all. Why do so many companies leave their people to sink or swim?

This essay appears in "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010," which is compiled by this journal in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. The ten problems and the innovative solutions are discussed in each essay. This particular essay describes research demonstrating the importance of daily work progress, even incremental progress, for motivating workers. Additional research showed that managers underestimate the importance of facilitating progress as a motivational tool.

The proliferation of performance measures and performance measurement systems is well documented and this has raised the question of just how much does it cost companies to measure and analyze such vast quantities of data.

Identifying and assessing growth options are complex, critical processes. Even more critical, and intricate, is the measurement of risk associated with each option. These authors provide a robust framework that will enable managers and their firms to choose those growth options that have the best chance of succeeding.

Art Kleiner, author of The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management, uncovers an effective and ongoing way to create employee alignment and accountability in Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions, by Gary B. Cohen.

Managers want to have their instincts validated before they act, such as waiting until all the data have been gathered before they launch a product. But relying on the tried and true doesn’t always serve managers well, especially when it comes to organic growth. The question of “Will it fly?” can be answered only by letting it fly – by launching the particular product and listening to the market respond. Growth leaders don’t do traditional research. As these authors explain, growth leaders win by placing small bets fast.

If your best salesperson leaves, how do you make sure you don't lose your best customers, too?

Here are nine questions you can ask to increase engagement when leading change.

Editor's Note: read the comments for some additional useful questions.

Can 'Complexity Theory' explain why strategies and change programs seldom deliver the results that were intended? Does it mean that we should leave everything to chance and abandon any attempts to shape our organizations for the future? In this article Dr Jean Boulton and Dr Peter Allen, from Cranfield's Complex Systems Management Centre, explain how this 'new science' can be used by managers to rethink their approaches to strategy and change management.

The “vision thing” is still with us, but while leaders insist in having a compelling vision, the fact is that many – both the leaders and the visions – leave people standing still, unmoved. A leader who engages stakeholders when developing a vision will, in the end, articulate one that resonates strongly and impels people to act.

Most change programs fail, but the odds of success can be greatly improved by taking into account these counter-intuitive insights about how employees interpret their environment and choose to act.