Disruptive innovation requires leadership vision and a willingness to accept suggestions and ideas from outside the chain of command, as the Apollo space program shows, writes John Millen. What President John F. Kennedy did, for example, was focus the country on reaching the moon, even if he didn't have tactics for getting there.

Female leaders in your organization might not be getting as many training and development opportunities as men, which is inequitable as well as a potential retention problem, writes Alaina Love. "Development plans should be forward-focused and include stretch assignments, exposure to senior leadership and projects that allow women to practice skills they will need for advanced roles," she writes.

Good business writing is direct, short, easy to understand and uses simple language with strong verbs, writes John Brandon. Nobody's perfect, but do your best to check spelling errors and common grammar mistakes, he writes.

Speakers can connect with an audience if they remember the grade-school lessons of story time that involved "sharing, explaining, and telling stories that are close to us," writes Nick Gold, the incoming president of the International Association of Speakers Bureaus. There's no shortcut, he argues, as you'll have to practice and be willing to accept criticism.

Elon Musk says it was his disappointment with NASA's space program after the Apollo lunar missions that spurred him to start SpaceX with an eye toward landing on the moon and Mars. He discusses his focus on reusable rockets, SpaceX's early days and why living on just one planet is bad for humanity's survival chances.

Steven Rothstein paid $250,000 to American Airlines in the 1980s for the unlimited-travel AAirpass, flying more than 30 million miles before American ended the program, sparking years of legal battles and bitter feelings. Rothstein's daughter Caroline documents how the airline was like a second family to her father, who battled depression in the years before American revoked his pass for alleged contractual violations.

Successful innovation labs are composed of diverse teams, aligned with the organization's goals and tracked and measured, writes Simone Bhan Ahuja. "Creating clear goals for the lab helps both intrapreneurs and company leaders understand the direction and purpose of innovation initiatives," she writes.

A proposed settlement would result in Google paying $13 million to plaintiffs in data privacy litigation concerning the company's Street View feature. Court documents allege that Google purposely gathered information including emails and passwords via Wi-Fi networks as its cars captured images of neighborhoods for Street View.

Many states have heightened workplace safeguards for medical marijuana users, and judges in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island have sided with employees who sued over firings related to such marijuana use. Recreational users are slowly gaining protections in states such as Nevada, where a new law says job candidates cannot be rejected based on a positive test for marijuana, even if used recreationally.

Women now hold nearly 27% of board seats at S&P 500 companies, and only one company in the index has an all-male board, according to ISS Analytics. Significant progress is still needed, however, and all-male boards remain more common at smaller companies, data show.