Speed is not preordained. Speed is a choice. You’ve got to set up a culture that has urgency and wants to experiment. You can’t flip a switch and suddenly get speed — Andy Jassy

For organizations to stay resilient and competitive, they need to master two interconnected capabilities: speed and innovation. 

That’s the key insight from new research by MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). They surveyed over 700 companies worldwide to understand what drives top performance. Their findings reveal that the highest growth and profitability come from companies excelling at both accelerating time-to-market and continually introducing new products and services.

Here are three major takeaways from the MIT CISR study:

1. Speed alone provides minimal boost — racing to market faster doesn’t improve results. The companies with real differentiation couple speed with ongoing innovation. The top performers launched more revenue-generating innovations while also getting to market faster than competitors.

2. Digital capabilities are foundational — leading companies leverage cloud platforms, APIs, automation, real-time data, and other digital technologies. These tools allow them to tap ecosystems, enable collaboration, quickly respond to changes, and rapidly deliver innovative offerings. 

3. Leadership and organization evolve — the top companies shifted from hierarchical control to empowered teams. Leadership focused on communicating strategic vision and coaching, not commanding. Shared dashboards provided transparency on value creation goals and guided data-driven decisions at all levels. Work was organized around outcomes rather than tasks.

The researchers identified four drivers (a framework) for these high-performing organizations:

1. Empowering leadership, while simplifying work

2. Adopting leading-edge technology

3. Using data as a guide

4. Nurturing an innovative ecosystem

The MIT CISR framework provides a blueprint for management practices and digital technologies that enable top performance. I recommend reading the complete research article. It offers an in-depth look at the approaches, leadership styles, and organizational models that allow some companies to continually adapt and lead their industries. And the highlighted case study on Mercedes-Benz is a model to be mimicked.

Note: Originally published as a LinkedIn article