Rethinking product prioritization with the Opportunity Spectrum

The hidden cost of comfortable prioritization

Traditional prioritization methods are appealing because they seem simple. A scoring system that ranks ideas objectively? Sounds great. But here’s the hard truth: these methods often protect the status quo instead of sparking meaningful innovation.

How most teams approach prioritization

• They carefully score opportunities using set metrics.
• They lean toward small, safe improvements with predictable results.
• They unintentionally create a culture where bold ideas are discouraged.

This doesn’t just limit innovation; it creates what could be called “opportunity debt.” Every missed breakthrough and every cautious decision is a step away from a potentially better product.

Three strategies to rethink prioritization

1. Think in Portfolios, Not Lists

Stop viewing opportunities as a simple ranked list. Your product strategy should be more like an investment portfolio, diversified, adaptable, and resilient. This is probably the most common strategy being communicated by people like Gibson Biddle for years.

Organize opportunities into three categories

• Incremental improvements: Small, steady enhancements that deliver consistent value.
• Emerging opportunities: Promising ideas with moderate risk.
• Transformational bets: Big, bold ideas that could change everything.

This kind of intentional distribution reduces the risk of stagnation while ensuring there’s room for big ideas to flourish. If you want to use tools. Think of opportunity maps or heatmaps. They can help visualize this portfolio approach and identify gaps. Don't start with the tool but with a blank canvas.

2. Focus on first principles

Frameworks can be useful, but they often add unnecessary complexity. Instead of diving straight into scoring, take a step back and ask yourself:

• What do our customers truly need right now?
• Does this opportunity align with our main goals?
• What’s the simplest way to create meaningful value?

These straightforward questions cut through the noise and reveal opportunities that might initially seem less attractive. For example, an overlooked feature request might actually address a deeper customer pain point than a flashy new initiative.

To help facilitate this thinking, always work in cross-functional teams to gather diverse perspectives when defining opportunities. It's a false belief that these opportunities need to come from Product all the time. There is so much opportunity debt happening in companies because other functions don't get the chance to be part of the discussion. This collaborative process often uncovers insights that scoring frameworks might miss. (Further reading on why Product Managers or in this case UX are not the center of the universe)

3. Prioritize open and transparent

Decisions made in isolation can stifle innovation. When prioritization happens behind closed doors, great ideas often don’t get a fair chance.

Instead, involve your team and stakeholders in the decision-making process. Use tools like Opportunity Solution Trees (yes a tool but a good one because it doesn't automatically tell you which opportunity is better than the other) or collaborative whiteboards to make decisions visible and open for discussion. For instance, a bold idea from a junior team member could spark the kind of transformation your product needs, if it’s given the chance to breathe.

This transparency doesn’t just build trust; it fosters a culture where the best ideas, no matter their source, can rise to the top.

View options as a spectrum

Think of your initiatives not as a rigid ranked list but as a spectrum, a dynamic range of possibilities that span different levels of impact, risk, and timeline. This shift in perspective and thinking reframes prioritization from a narrow, linear exercise to a broader, strategic approach.

On one end of the spectrum are immediate-value initiatives, such as incremental improvements that enhance existing features, address customer pain points, or optimize processes. These deliver quick wins and keep your product competitive in the short term.

At the other end are long-term transformational bets, bold, high-risk ideas that may take time to pay off but have the potential to reshape your product, disrupt your market, or create entirely new categories. In between, you have emerging opportunities, initiatives that balance moderate risk with promising returns, often serving as bridges between today’s needs and tomorrow’s possibilities.

1. Immediate-Value Initiatives

• Examples: Bug fixes, UI tweaks, small feature enhancements.
• Purpose: Maintain user satisfaction, address urgent needs, and keep the product running smoothly.
• Risk/Reward: Low risk with predictable, but limited, impact.

These are your bread and butter, the foundation of day-to-day product management. They ensure your product stays relevant and your customers feel heard, but over-reliance on this category can lead to stagnation.

2. Emerging Opportunities

• Examples: Features that tap into adjacent markets, integrations with other platforms, or experimental designs backed by early customer insights.
• Purpose: Explore new directions without overcommitting resources. These should be the average new value adds.
• Risk/Reward: Moderate risk with scalable potential.

These initiatives act as your exploration zone. They’re more ambitious than immediate-value projects but less speculative than transformational bets. Think of them as pilot projects that help you test the waters before diving in.

3. Transformational Bets

• Examples: Groundbreaking new features, innovative technologies, or entirely new product lines.
• Purpose: Push the boundaries of what your product can achieve, with the potential to redefine your market.
• Risk/Reward: High risk with the possibility of exponential rewards.

While these initiatives can be costly and uncertain, they’re the ones that lead to breakthroughs. They require courage, vision, and often a longer timeline to realize their impact.

How to balance the spectrum

The key to leveraging the opportunity spectrum is balance. Over-indexing on immediate-value initiatives can make your product feel stagnant, while focusing solely on transformational bets can leave your team overstretched and customers underserved.

Here’s a practical way to approach it

• Allocate 50% of resources to immediate-value initiatives to keep your current customers happy and engaged. Build a product your users love!
• Dedicate 30% to emerging opportunities to explore new directions and keep your product evolving. Build a competitive product!
• Reserve 20% for transformational bets that could redefine your product or market. Build an innovative product!

Regularly review and adjust this balance based on your team’s capacity, market conditions, and strategic goals.

The power of spectrum thinking

The spectrum approach acknowledges that different types of opportunities serve different purposes. Immediate-value projects keep the lights on, emerging opportunities drive incremental growth, and transformational bets create the breakthroughs that move industries forward.

By viewing prioritization as a spectrum, you give yourself permission to embrace uncertainty and diversity in your roadmap. Instead of asking, What’s the safest choice? you begin asking,

This mindset shift also aligns teams more effectively. It helps stakeholders understand that not every initiative will deliver immediate results, but each has a role in the bigger picture. Visualizing opportunities on a spectrum can also foster more productive discussions, with teams evaluating trade-offs collaboratively instead of fixating on rigid rankings.

Using the spectrum in practice

Visualize the spectrum

Use tools like Opportunity Maps or Impact/Effort matrices to plot your initiatives across the spectrum. Seeing everything in one view can highlight gaps or over-investments in a particular area.

Track metrics across categories

Define success metrics for each type of opportunity. For example, immediate-value projects might focus on retention, emerging opportunities on adoption rates, and transformational bets on long-term ROI.

Revisit and rebalance

Treat the spectrum as a living document. Reevaluate your distribution of resources quarterly or after major product milestones to ensure alignment with your strategy.

A dynamic, balanced future

The opportunity spectrum transforms prioritization from a rigid ranking exercise into a flexible, dynamic system that adapts to your product’s evolving needs. It acknowledges that every opportunity, big or small, has value when viewed in the right context.

By adopting this mindset, you empower your team to think more strategically, act more collaboratively, and embrace the full range of possibilities that drive both short-term wins and long-term innovation.

As a product leader, your job isn’t just to pick the safest option, it’s to balance the ecosystem of opportunities. Your strategy should evolve as your product and market grow, with the flexibility to embrace unexpected discoveries.

Be prepared to have opportunities that are pretty vague the more into the future you look. That's ok! Accept uncertainty. Create space for bold, unconventional ideas.