Harvard Business Review has just released its annual list of breakthrough ideas. Here's a quick look:

1. The Synthesizing Leader - Leaders who can decide which data to heed, which to ignore, how to organize and communicate it will be in demand.

2. Can I Hear Me Now? - Body area networks will report on our physiology to help lower health care costs.

3. China as a Green Lab - China's severe environmental challenges open up a vast market for companies with the right technology.

4. Risk, Uncertainty and Doubt - Businesses will need to tame uncertainty and doubt.

5. Battle of the Networks - Firms must learn how to navigate network-to-network competition.

6. Science in the Wild - R&D departments must learn to use outside collaborators, including customers, as co-creators.

7. A Homestead Act for the 21st Century - Every child should be given a $6000 stake in life to use for college, a first house or a business.

8. Customers Demand Their Slice of IP - Organizations must learn to reward their collaborators. (See #6)

9. A Cartel for Oil Consumers - There may be an OPIC -- Organization of Petroleum Importing Countries -- in our future.

10. Seeing the "Health" in Health Care Costs - Targeted increases in health care payments for certain drugs may help lower treatment costs.

11. Peer-to-Peer Leadership Development - A U.S. Army intranet offers a new model for leadership development.

12. Unstick Your Customers - Stores (government agencies? university processes such as registration?) should help customers get in and out quickly, thereby increasing customer loyalty.

13. Follow the Leader - Carefully consider how your decisions reflect your values because they help establish the organizational culture.

14. Wake Up and Smell the Performance Gap - The gap between the economic performance of nations and that of companies is growing wider every month. More on this one to come...

15. The Avatar as Consumer - Avatars are a new set of customers. (Ok, whatever you say.)

16. Befriending the Private Label - Many private labels equal the quality of manufacturers' regular brands.

17. A Critical Mass for the Long Term - A group of vanguard companies is bucking the market's short term thinking and hoping through its collective strength to change the market's orientation.

18. The Costly Secret of China Sourcing - Sourcing products in China is not paying off in the ways companies expected, given the nation's political, physical and logistical limitations.

19. The Brain as Boondoggle - Hiring will still require insightful, nuanced reading of people.

20. Why They Call It Work - Companies should not have to imbue employees' lives with meaning. If a job is worth doing, that should provide meaning enough.

Read more in the February issue of Harvard Business Review.