Progress is not always incremental
Many great advances arrive as leaps, not single-digit gains. Sometimes you can just run.
Roadmaps that only allow crawl-then-walk miss how real advances land. Many step-changes arrive as discontinuous moves: a new substrate, a new operating model, a new data path that makes the old curve irrelevant.
Incrementalism is still necessary for reliability and compounding. It is not a religion. When the leap is available—and the organization can absorb it—run.
Plan for both: steady improvement in the estate you have, and the courage to replace curves instead of polishing them.
