A bias towards the new
Wardley describes a healthy organisation as one that constantly seeds new options at the edge. "A bias towards the new" is the practice of encouraging experimentation, encouraging challengers, and investing in emergent practices before incumbents stagnate. It balances the efficiency of existing operations with a deliberate pipeline of novelty.
Why this doctrine matters
- Novel options prevent lock-in. Continual experimentation stops the organisation from clinging to decaying advantages.
- Exploration feeds evolution. Early prototypes reveal which components are ready to move along the evolution curve.
- Fresh ideas attract talent. People want to work where curiosity is rewarded and the next play can surface from anywhere.
Practices to embed
- Ring-fence exploration budget. Protect funds for discovery work, even when optimisation initiatives compete for attention.
- Sponsor edge experiments. Give teams permission to run small bets on emerging technologies or practices tied to mapped opportunities.
- Harvest successful patterns. When an experiment shows promise, provide settlers and town planners to industrialise it deliberately.
- Celebrate intelligent failure. Share stories of experiments that taught valuable lessons even if they did not scale.
Watch for anti-patterns
- Treating innovation labs as theatre while the core business ignores their findings.
- Measuring exploratory work with the same KPIs as industrialised services.
- Allowing middle management to veto experiments because they threaten current revenue streams.
Questions to ask
- Where on our maps do we lack a pipeline of emerging options?
- How quickly can a promising experiment graduate into mainstream delivery?
- Which incentives encourage teams to surface novel ideas instead of hiding them?
- What lessons from failed experiments have we shared with the wider organisation?