Innovation In A World On Fire
As a leader, you're responsible for cultivating the business and ensuring numbers are met. Meanwhile, there's too much to do, not enough to do it, and the competition is rising. The times are intense, for everyone.
And also, leadership keeps using that word: innovation.
Sounds great - just hit that Innovate button, right next to the Go Viral switch.
But really, you know something seriously needs to change. The metrics aren't improving. Executing your backlog won't magically produce breakthrough results. You feel stuck. You can't stop delivering. You can't add resources. Your folks can't work harder.
Luckily, there is a path toward innovation, but it ain't easy.
WTF is Innovation, Anyway
Strip away the buzzword bullshit. Innovation means delivering better results in a new way.
Pivot. Shift. Change. ...doing things differently is at the root of innovation. And the more successful your solutions, the more "innovative" your solutions will feel.
Ok, great. But changes cannot be chaotic, not in business. Change must be responsible. We have to respect the brand equity we have, the fiscal responsibility we own, and the good work that has gotten us here. So how?
Innovation starts with research - fresh wisdom is required.
You must rediscover your customers and turn a honest eye upon your business, uncovering opportunities buried in the insights and challenges therein. Opportunities inspire ideas. Ideas become concepts that can be validated with users, partners, and executives. Validated concepts become solutions to be prioritized through a lens of desirability, feasibility, and viability. Prioritization informs a more articulate roadmap (including target metrics) and a backlog of robust stories. Finally, the more successfully all of this comes together, the more "innovative" you'll be judged.
Anyway, save the labels. That’s a lot of work. Where do you find the time, money, and people?
The Resource Problem
The reality is you have a fixed budget per sprint (let's say 1,000 person-hours). Every hour is allocated. Every story is prioritized. Negotiations are difficult. You're delivering against commitments and still not getting everything done. Where does this time for innovation come from?
Innovation requires a difficult investment decision: reallocation.
How the Math Actually Works
Here's the move that feels dangerous but changes everything: dedicate 20% of your capacity to discovery. Take 200 of those 1,000 person-hours and allocate them to research, strategy, conceptual design, and user testing. Pull them from delivery.
I know. It sounds impossible. How can you afford to lose 20% of delivery capacity?
Here's what actually happens:
Discovery provides real solutions. Your team researches customer needs, tests ideas, identifies what's viable for your business. When a concept succeeds in discovery, it moves to delivery with deeply articulate requirements, already proven desirable with customers and proven feasible with engineering.
Delivery becomes more efficient execution. With research and insights reinforcing your strategic foundation, your entire team executes with confidence. UX starts with a tested, functional prototype, empowered to design edge cases quickly. Visual design isn't inventing during sprint; they're refining and ensuring brand and design systems remain true. Engineering implements with far fewer missteps, revisions, and refinements. UAT, marketing, legal, compliance, partners… all teams benefit.
Fewer questions. Fewer revisions. Fewer debates. Faster execution.
That efficiency gain? It's roughly equal to the 20% you pulled from delivery.
You're not losing capacity. You're reallocating it from building whatever's next in the backlog to building validated solutions that actually move your metrics.
What This Looks Like Operationally
Initial Investment: Strategic Foundation
Audit your business, marketplace, customers, and backlog. Understand what's working, what isn't, and where opportunities exist. This creates the intelligence that informs everything else. One sprint or many: the more you can invest, the stronger your foundation.
Ongoing: Dual-Track Rhythm
Your Delivery Track continues executing, only now they execute against validated solutions in addition to your existing backlog. Your Discovery Track continuously explores new concepts: researching, designing, testing, prioritizing. Some concepts fail fast. Most succeed (thanks to the research) and move to Delivery with complete clarity.
Over time, the teams find a balance and cadence that feels natural and calm. Delivery isn't waiting on Discovery. And Discovery isn't disconnected from execution. Both tracks run in parallel, feed each other, with an emphasis on delivery excellence and keeping teams at full capacity.
The Payoff: Compounding Value
Q1: you're learning the rhythm, shipping exciting solutions. Q2: your metrics are improving, your teams are feeling empowered and effective. Q3: leadership is celebrating your success and eager to invest.
Getting Started
If you have zero budget: implement this with your existing team. Reallocate as much capacity as possible, empower your folks to research, explore, and test. Ultimately, this will level up your user story quality. You can prove incremental value over time, then invest more.
If you have some budget: bring in strategic design leadership to orchestrate both tracks, cultivate your team capabilities and ensure delivery excellence. Add a strategist to cut through institutional bias with fresh perspective. You'll see massive improvements, quickly.
Either way, it starts with a key decision: prioritize innovation by making space for discovery.
You likely have the resources. It's more about how you are using them.
Need help unlocking innovation? Let's talk about how this framework can apply within your environment - startups, mid-size, enterprise orgs. It may sound impossible, but I've seen innovation flourish for digital product & service teams across industries, at every scale.