The Innovation-Killing Myth of Predictability

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
—Mark Twain

For decades, businesses have treated predictability as the holy grail of software development. If we can just get the estimates right, tighten up our roadmaps, and control the delivery pipeline, we tell ourselves, innovation will follow. But the truth is more uncomfortable: our pursuit of certainty is actively killing innovation.

Why Innovation Matters More Than Ever

Chasing predictable practices leads to predictable outcomes. And while predictability might offer short-term comfort, it rarely delivers long-term growth. Innovation is the engine of differentiation. Without it, your product or service becomes commoditised, and when you’re only competing on price, you’re in a race to the bottom.

As Scott Galloway puts it, there are three questions every product or service must answer to succeed:

1. Differentiation

Is the product or service truly differentiated? Does the strategy clear the hurdle of differentiation from our competitors?

If your offering isn’t meaningfully different, then why should customers choose you? Innovation is how you escape the sea of sameness. Differentiation isn’t just about having more features, it’s about positioning, usability, quality, emotional appeal, and solving a real pain better than anyone else. If you look like everyone else in your market, then price is all that’s left to compete on.

2. Relevance

Does anyone care about the differentiation?

Relevance is the filter that determines whether differentiation has any actual value. You might have an elegant solution, but if it doesn’t speak to your users’ jobs-to-be-done, it’s irrelevant. Relevance means being attuned to changing customer needs, market dynamics, and usage patterns. It’s not just about what you can do, it’s about what your users are trying to do.

3. Sustainability

What steps can we take to ensure that our products and services continue to be differentiated and relevant?

Markets evolve. Competitors copy. Technology shifts. A point of differentiation today can be table stakes tomorrow. Sustainability means building a repeatable system of learning and adapting. That includes investing in research, creating feedback loops, enabling rapid iteration, and maintaining organisational flexibility.

In short: without innovation, your brand is just a logo. With it, you build something people want, remember, and come back for.

The Cost of Certainty

Donald Reinertsen, in The Principles of Product Development Flow, puts it succinctly:

“We will create risk-averse development processes that strive to ‘do it right the first time.’ This risk aversion will drive innovation out of our development process.”

In trying to remove variability, we remove the very conditions required for discovery.

Variability Is the Work

Lean and Agile weren’t designed to enforce predictability, they were created to manage variability in service of value.

“Responding to change over following a plan.”
— Agile Manifesto

Marty Cagan is clear on this point in Inspired:

“No software development methodology, Agile, Lean, or otherwise, can ensure predictability.”

The goal is not to follow a plan perfectly. It’s to inspect, adapt, and course-correct based on what you learn. As Dan North puts it:

“Predictability is a trap. If you’re measuring success by your ability to predict the future, you’re optimising for the wrong thing.”

Agile works not because it avoids variability, but because it embraces it.

Context Matters: The Cynefin Framework

Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework is a decision-making model for managing uncertainty. Most innovation work happens in the Complex domain — where cause and effect can only be known in retrospect.

When we force complex work into predictable containers, we choke innovation.

Local Optimisations, Global Dysfunction

In The Phoenix Project, Gene Kim and co-authors write:

“Local optimisations are the enemy of global flow.”

When teams are judged by outputs instead of outcomes, they optimise for activity, not value. As Marty Cagan reinforces in Empowered:

“Empowered product teams are assigned problems to solve… and are held accountable to results.”

Why We Still Chase Control

In Radical Focus, Christina Wodtke warns against turning OKRs into glorified task lists.

In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb argues:

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

We pretend to plan our way out of complexity. But planning is not foresight, it’s often just structured denial.

A Better Way Forward

1. Shift from Projects to Products
   Long-lived teams build context and evolve solutions.

2. Use Objectives, Not Deadlines
   Let teams focus on problems, not fixed outputs.

3. Create Slack for Innovation
   100% utilisation destroys adaptability.

4. Trust Teams with the Why
   Empower them to find the right how.

5. Measure What Matters
   Focus on outcomes, not just throughput.

6. Match Approach to Domain
   Use Cynefin to know when to explore and when to execute.

7. Design for Differentiation, Relevance, and Sustainability
   Solve meaningful problems in ways that last.

Final Thoughts

Predictability isn’t inherently bad, but it must be applied with care. Roadmaps, OKRs, and deadlines are tools, not doctrine. When everything is optimised for predictability, innovation withers.

The real work of building great products lies in navigating uncertainty, not eliminating it.

Because if you can predict it, you’re probably not innovating.

“Innovation is the child of freedom and the parent of growth.”
—William J. McDonough