Core innovation and Breakthrough innovation are not the same game.
Different rules.
Different players.
Different timeline.
Different KPIs.
Most companies don't fail from a lack of innovation. They fail because they apply the Core playbook to Breakthrough work, and the Breakthrough dies.
Every company needs all three. Most only carry the Core.
What already works. Most of the revenue, most of the attention, and on its own, not enough.
The next S-curve. Where a real breakthrough starts, and where most large companies lose it.
The speculative bet, years out, that either becomes the next Core or teaches you something you needed to know. If it sounds like science fiction now, good. That's the Beyond zone.
Edge and Beyond are breakthrough. Core is what pays for the chance to build them.
The same two axes, in six archetypes instead of three zones.
Mavericks aren't hired through a normal process. They're already inside most companies, usually unrecognised. Finding them is the first move.
Breakthrough moves through three stages, Chaos, Growth, Scale, and each needs a different kind of leadership and a different kind of patience.
The signal is almost never where a company is looking. It's sitting in the part of the business built to make it go away fastest.
What gets measured decides what survives: learning velocity, intelligent risk-taking, and real adoption, not quarterly return.
Breakthrough moves through three stages. Each needs a different kind of leader, and a different definition of success.
Most support teams exist to close eighty percent of tickets as fast as possible.
The other twenty percent, the ones that don't fit the script, are early adopters describing what should exist next, for free.
How do you find the 20%?
If you hold the portfolio for a large company, deciding what gets funded and what gets starved.
Or if you’ve been handed the job of building something that doesn’t fit the existing org chart yet.
If this is already how you think, you know where to find me.