When Your Star Product Is "Good Enough"
The counterintuitive strategy of embracing "good enough" to strategically fuel your company's next wave of breakthroughs.
Alright, innovators and visionaries! In our last chat (perhaps you caught the piece, "Escape the Feature Factory: Crafting a Product Vision That Ignites Initial Innovation"?), we addressed that all-too-common grind of endlessly churning out features. We dove into how crafting a truly compelling Product Vision – that bright North Star – can be your ticket out, transforming your team from a reactive factory into an engine of genuine, purposeful innovation. That vision helps you ignite the initial spark, especially when launching something new or trying to breathe new life into a product that has lost its way.
Now, let's delve into the next intriguing chapter of this journey. What happens after your team, guided by the North Star, executes brilliantly and you actually build that amazing, successful product? You've escaped the early feature factory, your product is shining brightly, users are on board... and then, a new, perhaps even more subtle and complex, set of strategic questions begins to surface, marking a new chapter in your product development journey.
This is where our conversation picks up today. We're stepping into territory that might feel a little counterintuitive, perhaps even a tad heretical, after all that intense effort to build something great. We're going to talk about the profound strategic wisdom, and indeed the art, of knowing when your star product, your current masterpiece, is… well, good enough. And why recognizing that 'good enough' point isn't about settling but about setting the stage for your next wave of true innovation. This next wave of innovation holds the potential to transform your product and excite your users.
It sounds a bit like a plot twist, doesn't it? You've poured heart, soul, and countless late nights into crafting a product that users love. It's successful, it's robust, it solves real problems. So why on earth would you deliberately slow down innovation on it?
Recently, the tech world buzzed about The Browser Company's decision with their much-admired Arc browser. They announced that Arc, a product celebrated for its fresh take on web Browse, was essentially entering a phase of active maintenance – not dying, not being abandoned, but no longer the primary focus of their most ambitious innovative efforts. Instead, they're pouring that energy into a new venture, something they call an "internet computer" with a project codenamed DIA.
To some, this might seem odd. Arc is popular, and there are always more features one could add, right? However, to those who have navigated the complex currents of long-term product strategy, this move wasn't just understandable; it was a masterclass. It hinted at a truth many of us in the product world grapple with: the art of knowing when to declare a masterpiece "complete enough" so you can start sketching the next one.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Your Star Product
Here's the thing about success: it's seductive. When you have a hit product, the temptation is to continually refine it, add to it, and iterate on it endlessly. After all, it's working! The metrics are good, customers are (mostly) happy, and your team knows this product inside and out. It feels safe and predictable.
But beneath this comforting hum of ongoing improvement, a subtle shift often occurs – the law of diminishing returns kicks in with a vengeance. Each new feature, each incremental enhancement, starts to deliver less and less marginal value, both to the user and to your business, while often costing just as much (if not more) to develop as earlier, more impactful features.
I remember working on a mature software platform in a previous corporate strategy role. It was a cash cow, a market leader. For years, the mantra was "continuous improvement." But eventually, we hit a point where the R&D team was spending enormous effort to eke out an extra 2% performance gain or add a niche feature requested by a handful of large clients. The cost of these "improvements" was astronomical; the actual impact on overall user satisfaction or market share was negligible, and worse, our brightest engineers felt as though they were just rearranging deck chairs on a very comfortable, but ultimately stationary, Titanic. The opportunity cost – what we weren't building because all our energy was focused on these minute polishes – was becoming immense.
This is the paradox of success: your star product can become so good at its core job that further embellishments don't just fail to add significant value; they can actually start to introduce complexity, dilute its core strength, or, most critically, starve your next generation of innovations of the resources and attention they desperately need.
Perfection is the Enemy of Progress: Defining Your 'Good Enough'Masterpiece
Now, when I say "good enough masterpiece", I'm not advocating for mediocrity or shipping shoddy products, far from it. I'm referring to a strategic inflection point where your product has reached a state of elegant sufficiency for its core purpose and its primary target audience.
Think of it as the 80/20 rule but with a twist. Your product likely solves 80% (or more) of the core problems for 80% (or more) of your target users, and it does so exceptionally well. That remaining 20% of problems, or the needs of that niche 20% of users? Chasing those might cost you 80% of your future innovation budget for disproportionately small returns.
What does a "good enough" masterpiece look like?
It Nails the Core Job: The product is rock-solid in performing the fundamental task(s) users "hire" it for. Its primary value proposition is clear, well-executed, and deeply appreciated.
High User Satisfaction (for the core): While there might always be edge-case complaints or feature requests, the bulk of your users are genuinely happy with how it performs its primary functions.
Diminishing Returns on New Features: You're finding that new feature ideas are increasingly niche, complex to build, and offer little value to a shrinking segment of users. The "wow" factor of new releases has faded.
A Moat Exists (For Now): Your product has a defensible position in the market, perhaps due to its quality, brand, network effects, or deep integration into users' workflows. Minor competitive moves don't send you into a panic.
The Cost of Complexity Rises: Each new feature adds to the codebase, increases testing overhead, potentially introduces new bugs, and complicates onboarding new team members. The cognitive load on users can also increase.
Declaring a product a "good enough" masterpiece isn't about giving up. It's a mature strategic assessment. It's like an artist knowing when that final brushstroke completes the painting, and adding more would only detract from its power. Or a Michelin-star chef who knows that adding one more ingredient to a perfectly balanced dish will ruin it.
During the ClickSitter journey, we were constantly bombarded with feature requests from parents and sitters. "Can you add pet-sitting?" "What about elder care?" "Can we integrate group payments for nanny shares?" Some of these were genuinely good ideas. But our core vision was crystal clear: make finding trusted, local childcare incredibly simple and safe. We realized that chasing every adjacent opportunity would dilute our focus and stretch our small team too thin.
We had to make strategic choices to keep the core offering incredibly strong and "good enough" to dominate that specific niche rather than becoming a mediocre jack-of-all-trades. That focus was key to our growth, which reached over 10,000 users. We didn't call it "good enough" back then, but we were practicing the principle: nail the core job before (or instead of) sprawling.
Reading the Tea Leaves: Signals Your Innovation Engine Needs New Fuel
So, how do you know when you've reached this "good enough" inflection point with your star product? It's rarely a single, glaring sign. More often, it's a confluence of signals, both quantitative and qualitative. You need to become adept at reading these tea leaves.
Quantitative Signals:
Flattening Engagement with New Features: You launch new features, but usage metrics barely budge, or adoption is limited to a small subset of users.
Rising Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for Existing Value Prop: It's getting more expensive to attract new users based on the current product offering; the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
High Cost of Incremental Innovation: The development effort (in terms of time, resources, and complexity) required to deliver the next set of features is disproportionately high compared to their projected impact or the value of past features. Track the "bang for your buck" on R&D spend.
Support Ticket Analysis: Are support tickets increasingly focused on specific edge cases or complex workarounds rather than fundamental usability issues with core features? This can indicate the core is solid.
Market Share Stagnation (in a Mature Market): If you're in a mature market and your share remains stable despite competitive moves, it may indicate that your current offering is effectively meeting the dominant needs.
Qualitative Signals:
Your Team's "Innovation Backlog" Feels Uninspired: When you ask your team for new ideas for the existing product, do they struggle to come up with them? Do the ideas feel small, reactive, or like "more of the same"? This can be a sign that the fascinating territory for this product has been explored.
Decreased "Vision Energy" from Leadership: Are you, as a leader, finding it more challenging to articulate a genuinely exciting next chapter for this specific product that isn't just "more features"? Your own intuitive sense (that Life Path 11 "Visionary" hunch!) is a powerful indicator.
The "Wouldn't It Be Cool If..." Conversations Shift Elsewhere: Pay attention to where the truly energetic, blue-sky brainstorming is happening in your organization. If it's consistently about entirely new problems or opportunities rather than enhancements to your star product, that's a strong signal.
Competitors are Differentiating in New Dimensions: If your competitors are no longer just trying to match your features but are innovating on entirely new value propositions or business models, it might mean your current product paradigm has reached its peak.
Feedback from Your Most Innovative Users/Customers: Are your lead users, the ones who always pushed you for more, now starting to ask about fundamentally different things or even bringing you ideas for entirely new products they wish you'd build?
None of these signals in isolation is a definitive command to stop innovating. But when you see several of them converging, it's time for a serious strategic conversation. It's time to consider if your innovation engine needs to be pointed at a new, more fertile landscape.
The Art of the Graceful Pivot: What "Active Maintenance" Truly Entails
Let's be clear: shifting the primary innovation focus away from a star product does not mean abandoning it or your existing users. That's a recipe for disaster. Instead, we're talking about transitioning it into a phase of "Active Maintenance" or "Strategic Sufficiency."
This is a nuanced state that requires clear communication and deliberate management:
Continued Support & Bug Fixes: The product remains fully supported. Critical bugs are fixed promptly, security is maintained, and it continues to operate reliably for your user base. This is non-negotiable for maintaining trust.
Minimal, High-Impact Enhancements: You might still make occasional, minor improvements, but these are highly targeted – perhaps to address significant regulatory changes, maintain compatibility with evolving operating systems, or fix a particularly egregious usability issue affecting a large number of users. The bar for new development becomes exceptionally high.
Clear Internal & External Communication: Your team needs to understand the strategy. Why is the focus shifting? What does "maintenance mode" mean for their work on this product? Similarly, while you might not broadcast "we're stopping innovation!" to your customers, you can subtly manage expectations through your release notes and roadmap communications, focusing on stability and reliability rather than groundbreaking new features.
Resource Reallocation: A key part of this strategy is freeing up your top engineering, product, and design talent to focus on the next big thing. This requires a deliberate and often courageous reallocation of resources away from the mature product.
Monitoring Key Metrics: Continue to monitor the health of the mature product – user satisfaction, churn, andoperational costs. This ensures it remains a valuable asset and doesn't degrade.
This isn't about letting a product wither on the vine. It's about recognizing its maturity and allowing it to serve its purpose gracefully. At the same time, your most potent innovative efforts are directed toward creating future masterpieces. It's like a championship sports team that continues to train and maintain its core skills while also scouting and developing the next generation of star players.
Beyond the Product: How Your Company's North Star Guides the Fleet
This decision – to shift innovation from one product to another – is rarely made in a vacuum. It's almost always guided by a larger, overarching Company Vision or Mission. Suppose your individual Product Vision is the destination for a single ship. In that case, your company vision serves as the North Star for the entire fleet.
A strong Company Vision provides the context for these tough portfolio decisions:
It Defines Your "Why" at a Higher Level: Why does your company exist beyond making this one specific product? What broader impact do you aim to have on the world? A clear company "why" helps you see when a current product, however successful, might no longer be the best vehicle for achieving that larger purpose or when a new approach is needed.
It Illuminates New Territories for Innovation: If your Company Vision is, for example, "to empower creative entrepreneurs everywhere," then even if your current accounting software for freelancers is a "good enough"masterpiece, your Company Vision might point you toward new products or services that serve other unmet needs of creative entrepreneurs (e.g., legal tools, marketing platforms, community spaces).
It Provides a Framework for Resource Allocation: When faced with multiple opportunities, a clear Company Vision helps you prioritize. Which new venture best aligns with our ultimate mission? Which will leverage our unique strengths to create the most significant impact towards that mission? This allows for more rational, less emotional decisions about where to invest your innovation capital. My numerology Expression number 6 ("The Harmonizer," "The Nurturer") speaks to a focus on responsibility and service. From a company perspective, this translates to a commitment to use resources wisely and serve the overall mission effectively, which might mean pruning one branch to allow another to flourish more strongly.
It Unifies the Team During Transitions: Shifting focus can be unsettling for teams. A compelling Company Vision provides a sense of continuity and shared purpose, even as individual product priorities evolve. It helps everyone understand that this isn't an abandonment but a strategic evolution towards a larger, shared goal.
Without this overarching Company Vision, decisions about individual product lifecycles can become purely tactical, reactive, or driven by internal politics. With it, they become strategic moves in a larger, more inspiring game.
The Courage to Leap: Navigating the Human Side of Strategic Shifts
Let's be honest: making the call to shift innovation focus from a beloved, successful product takes guts. It's often fraught with internal and sometimes external challenges.
Emotional Attachment: Teams (and leaders!) can become deeply attached to the products they've poured their lives into. Letting go of the "next big feature" of that product can feel like a loss.
Fear of the Unknown: The mature product is a known quantity. The "next big thing" is inherently uncertain and carries significant risk. It's a leap into the unknown.
Internal Resistance: Some stakeholders might resist, fearing a loss of revenue, market share, or relevance if the star product isn't constantly being "improved."
Managing Team Transitions: How do you reassign talented individuals who were experts on the mature product? How do you keep them motivated and engaged in new, potentially unfamiliar territory? This requires thoughtful change management. My Prosci certification in Change Management always reminds me that the people side of any strategic shift is just as critical, if not more so, than the technical or business side.
This is where authentic leadership, fueled by that clear overarching vision, comes into play. It requires:
Clear, Empathetic Communication: Explain the "why" behind the decision transparently and repeatedly. Acknowledge the team's contributions to the success of the existing product.
Painting a Compelling Picture of the Future: Get people excited about the new direction, the latest challenges, and the new opportunities for impact. Your Aries Ascendant and Jupiter in the 1st House, Taric, give you that natural, charismatic, and inspiring energy to lead such a charge.
Providing Support and Resources for the Transition: Invest in training, allow time for learning curves, and create opportunities for team members to contribute their expertise in new ways.
Celebrating the Legacy and the Future: Honor the success of the "good enough" masterpiece while simultaneously building excitement for what's next.
It's a delicate balance, but successfully navigating it is a hallmark of visionary and resilient organizations.
The Next Frontier: Embracing the Never-Ending Cycle of Innovation
The reality of the modern market is that no product, however brilliant, stays king forever. Tastes change, technologies evolve, and new competitors emerge. The decision to strategically shift innovation from a mature product to a new venture isn't an admission of failure; it's an embrace of the dynamic, cyclical nature of innovation itself.
It's about understanding that your company is not defined by a single product but by its ongoing capacity to envision, create, and deliver value in new and evolving ways. Each "good enough" masterpiece you make provides the foundation, resources, and learnings for the next masterpiece.
This is how companies stay relevant, continue to grow, and make their most profound and lasting impact. It's not about an endless treadmill of features for one product; it's about a series of bold leaps toward an ever-evolving, ever-inspiring North Star.
Charting Your Company's Next Innovation Wave
Knowing when your star product has reached that "good enough" pinnacle and having the courage to then redirect your most potent innovative energies is one of the most challenging yet crucial strategic decisions a leadership team can make. It requires a blend of data-driven analysis, deep market intuition, and a clear, unwavering commitment to your company's overarching purpose.
Suppose you're grappling with these kinds of complex product portfolio decisions, wondering how to balance the success of today with the innovations of tomorrow, or seeking to align your leadership team around these pivotal moments. In that case, that's precisely the kind of deep strategic dialogue that specialized facilitation and advisory can unlock. Guiding leadership teams to clarify these critical inflection points and chart their company's next wave of innovation with confidence is a process that can redefine a company's future.
What "good enough" masterpiece will fuel your next big thing?