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.

Executives are reimagining the value of nonfinancial assets for their own companies, the broader industry, and the environment by making product development more design- and information-intensive. The result: new digitally enhanced offerings that are reducing material use, lowering energy demands, and increasing revenues.

The technology that underpins deep learning is becoming increasingly capable of analyzing big databases for patterns and insights. Before long, companies will be able to integrate a wide array of databases to discern what consumers want, and then leverage that information for market advantage. Deep learning might also be used to design products to meet consumers’ personal needs. Different types of organizations will try to harness the powers of deep learning in their own ways.

About a quarter of high-tech companies are run by CEOs who double as inventors. Through patenting and publishing activity, such leaders contribute their own expertise to their companies’ innovation and production efforts, even as they steer their respective ships. This hands-on approach may sound like a distraction from strategic thinking, but it’s the future for top leaders across many sectors, not just tech — and it is already upon us.

Companies seeking to drive innovation in the face of constant disruption benefit from adopting a strategy that supports both internal entrepreneurs and external partnerships rather than taking an either/or approach. The benefits: reduced development costs, faster time to market, and a collaborative, engaged workforce.

NASA’s Pirates were rebel innovators who created an award-winning mission control system for the shuttle program in record time, on a shoestring budget, and in the face of political resistance. Such renegades are committed to elevating business capabilities and future proofing them for novel challenges, often despite opposition from the status quo. Organizations that want to be ambidextrous need to create a climate that fosters such renegades and nurtures them when they appear.

Three impediments in particular work against agile adoption in most organizations. By addressing architectural rigidity, closing talent gaps, and adopting a product mindset, leaders and organizations can realize agile’s power in delivering business value.

The biggest consumer goods companies shell out more than $1 billion a year for R&D but lately have seen no appreciable impact on their sales. That’s troubling for companies whose growth has leveled off in recent years. In contrast, some smaller competitors that spend less on R&D — but do so more shrewdly — have seen a significant boost in sales.

New “markets for judgment” like the Creative Destruction Lab are bridging critical gaps between scientific breakthroughs and commercial applications — fueling tech-based entrepreneurship far from Silicon Valley.

Companies tend to compete not as individual entities, but as members of networks — which makes collaboration a strategic necessity, not merely a tactical choice. But while many executives say they want win-win solutions, in reality, they usually seek victories that don’t excessively annoy their counterparts. In other words, “win/no-lose” is a more accurate description.

Leaders today must wean their companies away from three pieces of conventional wisdom about digital strategy: agility, first-mover advantage, and minimum viable product. These ideas have anchored technological decision-making for over a decade but are highly unsuitable for the emerging world. In conditions of environmental uncertainty and interconnected technology, we need more thoughtfulness rather than more speed.

Innovation, much like marketing and human resources, can be made less reliant on artful intuition by using information in new ways. But this requires a change in perspective: We need to view innovation not as the product of luck or extraordinary vision but as the result of a deliberate search process.

For over 30 years, MIT Sloan’s Eric von Hippel has investigated the ways general users of products and services have improved them through tinkering and invention. “The Age of the Consumer-Innovator,” which he co-authored for MIT Sloan Management Review in 2011, was an important marker in explaining how user communities were changing product development. It laid the groundwork for von Hippel’s current research, which looks at the way some of today’s innovation is given away as a “free good.”

Coauthors Thomas H. Davenport and Stephan Kudyba discuss the many ways for organizations to monetize data, including selling “data products” directly to consumers. A seven-step model shows the way real-life companies are developing those products and services.

On Dec. 1 at 11 a.m. EST, join MIT SMR coauthors Thomas H. Davenport and Stephan Kudyba in a free, live webinar, where they will discuss their recent article, “Designing and Developing Analytics-Based Data Products.” The authors will look at the ways in which the internet of things, market forces, and evolving technology are changing how companies plan the development of data products. This new product category requires a reworking of the traditional phases of product development.

The combination of new analytical capabilities and burgeoning data assets are being used to form value-added “data products.” Such products have powered rapid growth in the value and success of online companies, but the expansion of analytics means the standard model for developing these products needs to evolve. An updated model needs to reflect new “time to market” expectations and input from a variety of stakeholders.

What’s happening this week at the intersection of management and technology.

Fast, iterative “virtual research centers,” where hypotheses are tested and improved before they are scaled into new products, are edging out traditional R&D approaches.

Bringing high-tech inventions built on patented technologies to market can be complicated and risky. The threat of added costs from patent infringement lawsuits has led technology companies to pool their talents — and patents — in technology consortia. Joining a tech consortium requires managers to weigh intellectual property value against the value of future collaborations and assess the consortium’s pros and cons for innovation, competition, and market creation.