It's a thin line of wisdom and conservatism, but an important distinction. People in these positions work on billion dollar software, so they can't just try out every idea that comes to mind in prod. But that's exactly what tends to be proposed: big multi month initiatives, not some prototype to test over a sprint.
The important question I learned to ask was "what problem am I trying to solve". One aspect of this thin line tends to be a muddy answer to this question. When you can only suspect and make grand showings instead of showing pragmatic use case you may not in fact be iterating, but experimenting.
> People in these positions work on billion dollar software, so they can't just try out every idea that comes to mind in prod.
Exactly, the ability to innovate ceases. Risk is most easily avoided by leaning on the existing institutional knowledge to direct new decisions even though they may be in new contexts.
> you may not in fact be iterating, but experimenting.
By definition, iteration is not innovation. Innovation is new ideas. New ideas aren't possible without experimentation, otherwise they would be known ideas.
Most large companies move from innovation to acquisition for a reason: the risk of innovation is too great for a large company to stomach.
It's a thin line of wisdom and conservatism, but an important distinction. People in these positions work on billion dollar software, so they can't just try out every idea that comes to mind in prod. But that's exactly what tends to be proposed: big multi month initiatives, not some prototype to test over a sprint.
The important question I learned to ask was "what problem am I trying to solve". One aspect of this thin line tends to be a muddy answer to this question. When you can only suspect and make grand showings instead of showing pragmatic use case you may not in fact be iterating, but experimenting.