How much of your roadmap is focused on big bets vs incremental improvements?

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4 Answers

Product Innovation

Rupali Jain

Optimizely Chief Product Officer • 2y

Balancing big bets and incremental improvements on a product roadmap is essential for long-term success. I believe in a strategic blend that aligns with the company vision, market demands and lifecycle of the product By definition "Big Bets" are are game-changers, high-impact initiatives that could reshape the market and/or your company's position. They're risky but offer huge rewards. Then there are the "Small Wins"—those little tweaks that make the product smoother, fix annoyances, and keep us ...Read More

1,696 Views
Paresh Vakhariya

Atlassian Director of Product Management (Confluence) | Formerly PayPal, eBay, Intel, Verizon • 1y

It depends. The balance between focusing on big bets and incremental improvements in a roadmap often varies depending on the stage of the company, strategic goals, competitive landscape, current market position, and resource availability. Big bets include: building new products, brand new features, entering a new geography/market, or a tech innovation (such as AI). Product incremental improvements include engagement drivers, process/feature enhancements, or UX improvements. The factors outlined ...Read More

1,007 Views
Sailaja Kalle

Gainsight Director, Product Management • 1y

It depends on the roadmap that we are building. There needs a balance of both. The Big bets are more the innovations that will help do a leap frog. Given significant investment here, this is usually vetted with multiple stakeholders. The incremental innovations are another way to accelerate the speed of delivery and help course correct quickly. This is something that I use more for quicker delivery and validation. Sometimes these also are build with partnerships across multiple design partners

537 Views
Pavan Kumar

Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • 2mo

There’s no fixed ratio - it should evolve with product maturity. The best teams intentionally balance big bets and incremental improvements based on where the product is in its lifecycle. Best practice by product maturity Early stage (0 → 1) Big bets: 60–80% Incremental: 20–40% Focus: finding product–market fit, testing bold hypotheses quickly Bias toward learning and iteration over polish Growth stage (1 → N) Big bets: 30–50% Incremental: 50–70% Focus: scaling what works while expanding into ad ...Read More

396 Views