Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular work days. That’s a sure road to burnout. Take time to refresh yourself. Take time for something different. Take time for some of that reading you can’t find time for during the week.

Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. This week there are articles about innovation.

From Bill Barnett: Persistence Enables Innovation

“Changes keep coming. Yesterday’s new thing is likely to be eclipsed by another new thing tomorrow. Many companies try to catch these waves, but only a few last. What separates the innovators from those who flame out? Some say it comes down to being able to ‘pivot’ into new areas fast. But in fact, the opposite is true; it comes down to persistence.”

From Adi Gaskell: Accenture Survey Explores What Sets Innovation Masters Apart

“The report saw nearly 1,500 executives surveyed from 12 countries and 11 different industry sectors. Accenture regard the benchmark for innovation excellence as being a company for whom 75% of current revenue comes from business activities that begun in the last three years. When set against this standard however, just 6% of companies were sufficiently innovative.”

From Greg Satell: These Are The Biggest Innovation Challenges We Must Solve Over The Next Decade

“Every era is defined by the problems it tackles. At the beginning of the 20th century, harnessing the power of internal combustion and electricity shaped society. In the 1960s there was the space race. Since the turn of this century, we’ve learned how to decode the human genome and make machines intelligent.”

From Barry Jaruzelski, Robert Chwalik, and Brad Goehle: What the Top Innovators Get Right

“Achieving high performance is difficult in any given year, and remarkably difficult to sustain. But the success of these high-leverage innovators reaffirms a finding of our study that has held true over time: There is no long-term correlation between the amount of money a company spends on its innovation efforts and its overall financial performance. Instead, what matters is how companies use that money and other resources to create products and services that connect with their customers. Also important is the quality of companies’ talent, processes, and decision making.”

From McKinsey & Company: How to take the measure of innovation

“By combining two simple metrics, companies can gain valuable insights into their innovation performance.”

Here’s a link to my selection of the best books on innovation.

Every week I share some recommendations of business books that I think are worth a look. Follow this link to the most recent list.

Every Monday, I do a blog post about business reading and business books. Follow this link to the most recent post, a review of Powerful by Patty McCord.