There are some cases where it's obvious how to be faster (and occasionally more rigorous): judiciously throw money at the problem. In academia, where grant funding is pretty limited and equipment is expensive, you probably want to only have enough infrastructure for, say, the 50th-90th percentile of load (microscopes, thermocyclers, analysis compute power, what have you), and accept that 10-50% of the time there will be a queue. If the difference between being successful in the market and having your lunch eaten by someone else truly is a matter of weeks, then it makes sense to you and your investors to put some extra money into a widget that will sit idle for most of the time but that helps when things are crunched.
That said, money can't fix everything---9 women can't produce a baby in one month!