To compete on innovation, firms often choose between building and buying their way to success. Buying is typically presented as a route to synergy, scale, diversification, speed-to-market, and ready-to-use assets. Building is often treated as the cheaper alternative that can be customized to needs. In our view, that framing is too simplistic. The real question is not whether to build or buy. It is whether this particular asset or capability should be built or bought, given the asset type, the time horizon, the organization’s ability to integrate it, the immediacy of market needs, and the level of uncertainty management is willing to bear.