Stop Optimising Yesterday: How to Fund the Future Without Burning Today
- Darren Emery
- Jun 30
- 5 min read
Reimagining the Three Horizons of Product Delivery for Innovation, Scale, and Stability
Most organisations are optimising yesterday.
Their delivery portfolios are packed with low-risk enhancements, backlog burn-downs, and scaled governance rituals.
Efficient? Arguably.
Strategic? Not even close.
When the future arrives - and it always does - it finds them underinvested, underprepared, and overcommitted to the past.
This article is about fixing that.
Not through frameworks or wishful thinking, but by rebalancing how we plan, fund, and lead across the Three Horizons of Product Delivery.
Because if you don’t deliberately invest in tomorrow, you’ll spend your best teams maintaining yesterday’s relevance.
Because most leaders aren’t short on ideas.They’re stuck executing old logic in a new environment.
“The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones.” — John Maynard Keynes
The Three Horizons (and What They Really Mean)
Traditionally, the Three Horizons model splits time into three layers of value:
Horizon 1: Core business – maintain and optimise.
Horizon 2: Emerging growth – scale what’s working.
Horizon 3: Future bets – invent what’s next.
Sounds strategic. But here’s the problem: most organisations still treat these as time-based phases, not parallel bets.
Worse - Horizon 2 becomes a ghost town, and Horizon 3 a hobby project.
That’s how you end up with a perfectly efficient system… delivering a slow death.
Case in Point: When Optimisation Becomes Obsolescence
A fintech client of ours had 30 delivery teams.
28 were dedicated to Horizon 1.
They were crushing their backlog, shipping fast, and keeping ops smooth. But when leadership asked, “Where’s the next £50m coming from?” - no one had an answer.
The roadmap had 212 items.
Only four were Horizon 3 initiatives. Three weren’t funded. One had no team.
That’s not delivery. That’s stagnation with a sprint cadence.
Stat to know: Companies that actively manage all three horizons grow revenue 2x faster and deliver 33% higher total shareholder returns than those who don’t.
(McKinsey)
What a Balanced Portfolio Looks Like
Let’s get practical. Here's what a healthy product delivery portfolio tends to resemble:
Horizon | Focus | Time Frame* | % Portfolio (Ideal) |
H1 | Exploit / Optimise | 0–12 months | 60% |
H2 | Expand / Scale | 6–24 months | 25% |
H3 | Explore / Invent | 12–36 months+ | 15% |
*Timeframes are indicative of planning intent - not when innovation is allowed to happen. Horizon 1 teams can still innovate, but the bets should align with their remit.
This isn't dogma - it’s a signal.
If 90% of your delivery effort is tied to last year’s priorities, you’re not managing risk - you’re compounding it.
The Three Delivery Blind Spots
Horizon 1 Obsession:
Everything becomes Business As Usual. Teams are locked into delivery rituals, optimising for efficiency, and measured only by throughput. Innovation becomes someone else’s job - or a line item on next year’s roadmap that never survives prioritisation.
2. Horizon 3 Theatre:
The company runs innovation weeks (IP Sprint anyone?) and idea portals. Nothing gets funded past the prototype. No team stays on a bet long enough to learn – they have no autonomy, no customer access, and zero path to scale.
The Missing Middle:
Great ideas are born (H3) but never scale (H2). They die in the “valley of governance” - too risky for Horizon 1 teams, too mature for incubation funding.
From Model to Method: How to Deliver Across All Three Horizons
Here’s what it takes to balance innovation, scale, and stability - without setting the house on fire.
🧭 1. Structure for Strategic Intent
Organise delivery around zones of intent, not org charts:
Stability Zone → Keeps H1 humming (SLAs, quality, resilience).
Transformation Zone → Turns proven H3 bets into scalable products.
Incubation Zone → Funds and protects experiments with long-term value.
Each needs its own cadence, culture, and capital. If you try to manage all three through the same metrics, funding models, and leadership styles… you’ll kill off Horizons 2 and 3 by accident.
Trying to govern all three horizons with the same OKRs is like expecting a startup and a legacy platform to behave the same way under pressure. You need differentiated governance to unlock differentiated outcomes.
💰 2. Fund Portfolios Like a VC - Not a Cost Centre
Annual budget cycles quietly kill innovation. Not by intent - but through inertia.Instead, think in rolling investments:
H1 → Measured by efficiency, uptime, throughput.
H2 → Measured by early traction, learning velocity, and option value.
H3 → Measured by clarity of insight, hypothesis validation, and strategic fit.
Don’t ask “Is this project worth funding?”Ask “Which horizon does this expand, and what’s the cost of not making this bet?” Fund options – and scale what works.
📊 3. Horizon-Aware Metrics
Your reporting should reflect your strategic mix - not just delivery status.
Track things like:
% of spend by horizon
% of teams by horizon
Time to learn (H3), time to scale (H2), time to value (H1)
Ratio of “exploit” vs. “explore” activities
If everything’s green, you’re not innovating - you’re optimising the past.
Case Study: Rebalancing the Future
We helped that fintech client rewire their delivery operating model:
6 teams were reassigned to a protected Incubation Zone.
Introduced rolling, stage-gated funding for early bets.
Reframed delivery metrics across all three horizons.
Created a “Graduation Path” from H3 → H2 → H1.
Within 9 months:
3 Horizon 3 initiatives moved into scaled delivery.
Time-to-validation dropped from 6 months to 6 weeks.
H2 work - previously invisible - now made up 21% of the roadmap.
Execs finally had visibility on where future value was being created.
They didn’t just ship faster.They started building a future worth scaling.
Final Thought: Don’t Just Deliver Value - Diversify It
Balancing the three horizons isn’t a matter of time - it’s a matter of conviction.
You're not just allocating capacity. You’re making bets on belief, risk, and long-term relevance.
The future doesn’t arrive fully formed. By the time it’s obvious, it’s already too late to lead.
That’s why your delivery portfolio must act like a strategy portfolio - funding today’s performance, tomorrow’s growth, and the day after tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
You need Horizon 1 to stay operational.
Horizon 2 to stay competitive.
And Horizon 3 to build what your competitors haven’t even seen yet.
If you’re serious about shifting from feature delivery to future creation - let’s talk.
