Beware conventional wisdom about how to boost your innovation capacity. Every company has unique innovation challenges. So another firm’s best innovation practice could become your worst nightmare. One firm—convinced that intensive idea generation would revive its ailing innovation efforts—established formal brainstorming sessions. But the company, already skilled at surfacing ideas, was inept at evaluating them—so ideas languished. Brainstorming only overloaded an already broken innovation process. How to avoid a similar fate? Hansen and Birkinshaw recommend viewing innovation as a value chain comprising three phases: idea generation, conversion, and diffusion. Six linking tasks are performed across those phases: internal, external, and cross-unit collaboration; idea selection and development; and spread of developed ideas. Any weak link can break your innovation efforts, so focus on pinpointing and strengthening your deficiencies. Tailor your innovation practices to your company’s needs, and you unleash a stream of profitable products, services, and businesses.