INNOVATION BY ALL.  How do you encourage it? How do you harness it? And most important, how do you make sure you’re not stifling it? As we talked to top-performing companies of every size and across industry on our 22nd annual list, the challenge of getting the best ideas from all your employees is the theme that came up more than any other. One obivious example is at our new No. 1… Subscribe now to enjoy the best offer from FORTUNE.

To say Lexi Reese is a get-things-done kind of person is an understatement.  To navigate the demands of her leadership role at fast-growing startup Gusto, a cloud-based provider of payroll and human resources software for small businesses, she maintains her schedule with an elaborate spread-sheet called “¿Dónde está Lexi?” that meticulously categorizes exactly how she spends her time.  The document is broken down into four overarching values and five quarterly priorities, ranging …

A few days before tugging on surgical gloves to slice open a patient’s brain, doctors at Stanford University slip on virtual reality goggles to help prepare for the risky procedure. Conventional MRI or CT scans can reveal only so much about what a patient’s brain looks like. But feed those images into VR technology, and surgeons can see the brain–all the ridges and fissures, lobes and veins–in 3D, so they can simulate surgery before stepping into the operating room. “It’s as if we have been there before, and it’s not a surprise,” says Gary Steinberg, a Stanford Medicine neurosurgeon who…