[overgryphon]

You talk about technological progress and innovation as something contradictory to any sort of predictable process iterating on an existing product.

This isn't always the case. A lot of new innovating ideas are incorporated into existing systems and products. Whether something stands alone by itself or not is a packaging question- not a judge of how innovating something new is. A key new feature in a complex system can solve large long-standing limitations and have huge impact.

Rather than only working on new interesting ideas as side projects, you can incorporate time to experiment with new ideas during a shipping cycle. Prototypes and answer a lot of questions in a short amount of time, and those answers can be incorporated into planning for new features.

Predictable process doesn't have to stifle innovation- and can create a forum for new innovating ideas to be discussed and executed on well.