How do you balance innovation with reliable delivery?

Question

Accepted Answer

The answer is not to choose, but to **separate and fund both deliberately**. Reliable delivery keeps the business running today; innovation keeps it relevant tomorrow. A CTO must protect time and structure for each.

## A way to balance them

```text
ALLOCATE CAPACITY EXPLICITLY (a common split)
- ~70% → core delivery & incremental improvement
- ~20% → adjacent bets and larger improvements
- ~10% → exploration / genuinely new ideas

PROTECT INNOVATION FROM DELIVERY PRESSURE
- Dedicated time/teams so it is not crushed by deadlines
- Accept that most experiments will fail
```

The horizon model (core / adjacent / transformational) helps ensure you are not investing entirely in the present.

## Concrete example

A CTO runs delivery teams on predictable quarterly commitments while funding a small innovation track with hack weeks and a few engineers exploring a new architecture, so urgent delivery never fully starves the future.

## Trade-offs and pitfalls

- **Pitfall:** all delivery, no innovation; the company is disrupted later.
- **Pitfall:** all innovation, no delivery; the company never ships reliably.
- Innovation needs tolerance for failure, which clashes with delivery's demand for predictability.

## Why it matters

Companies die from both ends: stagnation and chaos.

Deliberately funding innovation alongside delivery keeps the business reliable now and competitive later.

Holding that tension, instead of letting urgent delivery always win, is a defining test of technical leadership.