Best of the web reads: How to harness the power of fast innovation

With the constant demands business owners face each day, it’s hard to harness new opportunities in the market, and find the best way to put innovations in place.

Are tight deadlines, big teams and micro-management the key to launching new ideas and measuring results quickly? Apparently not, according to writer Scott Antony. For the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, he explores five ways to do things better, and they may not be quite what you expect.

Most people spend a lot of time weighing up options, but in business, deliberation is impractical. For the Farnamstreet blog, writer Shane Parrish draws on the world of elite baseball to consider how we can use our “strikezone” to make the best choices. He also tells us how to know when we’re not fit to call shots.

The world of high finance, computers and crime always allures, particularly the case of the Goldman Sachs programmer accused by the company of lifting proprietary computer code. The case, which saw the man jailed for eight years, has raised questions over exactly what he did wrong. Michael Lewis delves into it for Vanity Fair.

With their red-striped poles and no frills interiors, barber shops verge on ‘historical relic’ when it comes to the hairdressing industry. But a mysterious attraction keeps them alive. To a female, they feel like a no-go-zone – a secret place for men to groom and chat with the barber they become friends with over the years. For The Spectator, Henry Jeffreys gives his view on why barber shops are booming, and why he keeps going back.

This story first appeared on SmartCompany.