This week’s must-reads for managing in the digital age: Scaling digital projects with agile, one of Big Tech’s biggest insider defects, Amazon is everywhere, and finding creative inspiration in times of solitude.

Every team has a data-based strategy for regular season play — but the playoffs are a completely different story. In this episode of Counterpoints, we talk with Mike Trudell, a reporter who covers the Los Angeles Lakers for ESPN and other sports news outlets, about the mysterious intangibles that come to the foreground during the playoffs.

This episode of the Counterpoints podcast looks at whether cohesion analytics can quantify team chemistry — and if so, how to use that data to boost a team’s performance.

In this episode of Counterpoints, the subject is baseball — specifically, the analytics-centered strategy for pitchers called out-getting, which focuses on pitchers’ efficiency rather than on when, how often, and how much they pitch. Will this practice transform baseball in the classic Moneyball tradition — or will it simply be an interesting tactic that teams sometimes use to gain a temporary advantage?

Football players who seem mediocre in college suddenly flourish as top pro performers, while hot prospects flounder when they reach the NFL. Can teams’ recruiters and coaches accurately identify the key players that will help their team win games based on the players’ past performance? In this episode of Counterpoints, Wharton professor Cade Massey, host of “Wharton Moneyball,” argues that they can’t.

In Carliss Baldwin’s view, more modular organizations are better positioned to innovate.

In Part 7 of our eight-part video series, we take a big-picture perspective on the steps involved with the digital thread.

In Part 6 of our eight-part video series, we detail the quality assurance and inspection of a digitally manufactured component.

In Part 4 of our eight-part video series, we look at how digital simulation technologies like finite element analysis (FEA) make product testing more efficient and cost-effective in both short- and long-term contexts.

In Part 3 of our eight-part video series, we explore the technologies used for topology optimization and the role they can play in improving component and product performance.

In Part 2 of our eight-part video series, we explore how technology affects product and component design. The digital thread not only streamlines product design via the ability to digitally scan an existing part or design a new one using computer-aided design (CAD) software, it can also accelerate the development process by affording previously unattainable levels of transparency and input.

Many executives take the value of best practices as a given. We have an abiding faith in the idea that the most direct route to improved performance is to study what successful firms do and copy them. In reality, that is quite rarely the case.

Bad data is the norm. Every day, businesses send packages to customers, managers decide which candidate to hire, and executives make long-term plans based on data provided by others. When that data is incomplete, poorly defined, or wrong, there are immediate consequences: angry customers, wasted time, and added difficulties in the execution of strategy. Getting in front on data quality is crucial, and presents a terrific opportunity to improve business performance.

Large projects can succumb to a “cycle of doubt” — when support for the project wanes and delivery is imperiled in a self-perpetuating negative spiral. Here’s how to spot the warning signs of stakeholder doubts — before they derail your project.

It’s not smart to base any part of your strategy on what you see in the rear-view mirror — and that’s particularly true when you develop strategies for navigating modern, thorny environmental and social challenges. The norms and expectations about how companies manage sustainability issues are shifting fast: Just six years ago, only 20% of the S&P 500 companies produced sustainability reports, while by 2016, 82% did. Change is coming to business — and executives need to adjust.

To successfully lead major organizational transformations, executives need to align purpose, performance, and principles within their companies. Doing so isn’t easy — and requires mastery of a wide range of leadership skills.

To gain competitive advantage from supply chain analytics, companies need to reduce the time it takes to act on the insights those analytics generate.

High-profile accounting and corporate governance scandals have resulted in significant changes in the structure of corporate boards of directors, in particular the development of independent boards in which the CEO is the only employee director. The downside: Independent board members may not understand the business well enough to make optimal strategic decisions.

The way health care is billed in the U.S. system is part of the reason costs are so high. WellPoint*, one of the largest providers of health care benefits and insurance in the U.S., is using analytics to change its provider payment system. The goal: promote a health care system based on value, not the volume of services. This Data & Analytics Case Study takes an in-depth look at how WellPoint went from idea to implementation, working with physicians and IT staff to build its Enhanced Personal Health Care program.

Does talking about plans undermine productivity? Research says yes, sometimes — that when you talk about intentions you run the risk of creating a “premature sense of completeness.”