Imagine you’re trying to solve a problem, but none of your options are all that great. You could just walk away. Or you could try to take the best from two inadequate options to reach a solution.

“Integrative thinking is this idea of leveraging the tension of opposing ideas to create a great answer that we can achieve consensus around,” says Jennifer Riel, who teaches at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto. She gives examples from the film industry to show how CEOs have put the process to work.

Riel is also the chief strategy officer at IDEO and the coauthor, along with Roger Martin, of the book Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking.

Key episode topics include: strategy formulation, decision making, problem solving, integrative thinking, negotiation, tradeoffs, hard choices, modeling, creativity, film industry.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.