Don’t Try to Innovate on Your Entire Business Model in The Existing Organisation

Much is written about how to innovate in tech. Still, it boils down to the simple ability of individuals to focus on and prioritise the right things on a day to day basis, and that other people in other functions prioritise not only the same right things but also at the SAME TIME! This is where most organisations fail.

In Are You Lost in All the Priorities, I wrote about a methodology (slicing, pacing, and themed releases) to execute quickly on a set of super-high priorities across the organisation. I focused on how a young and immature organisation does not have prioritisation and execution processes in place to execute many large priorities in parallel. This is typical for startups as they are growing. However, the reverse question is this: Given the organisation’s current processes and people, what type of priorities can the organisation successfully execute on without getting hindered by the processes they have set up? This question is relevant for both young and mature (and large) organisations.

A company is typically set up around a defined customer group with a corresponding go-to-market strategy, channels, partners, sales (and marketing) and with employees who fit with this strategy. The product management and engineering organisation builds products that fit this market, these end-users, and this go-to-market. The company’s business model (how money is made) is accompanied with an operating model (how the company is set up to create value)…