An empty office lobby with a half-empty awards wall and piles of paper. Created by Michelle Loret de Mola using Midjourney Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla’s board of directors had opened a search for a new CEO to replace Elon Musk. Board members had been concerned that Musk was spending too much time in Washington and was increasingly out of touch with the business. Moreover, Musk’s political activity has severely damaged Tesla’s reputation with its customer base. In the Bay Area, one sees many Teslas on the road, including many with bumper stickers that say things like “I bought this before Elon went crazy!” The company said its first-quarter profit had plunged 71%, an astounding collapse. Quarterly revenue declined 9%, including a 20% drop in automotive revenue after sales fell in major markets like California, China, and Germany. Since December, Tesla’s market cap has lost about $900 million. And while Elon Musk’s many distractions may have hurt the brand irrevocably, Tesla’s woes are, in part, about the products it sells. The company’s once innovative product lineup now looks dated. The market’s demand for a cheaper model has gone unanswered. The insanely-designed Cybertruck garnered immediate attention, but demand soon fell off. Hundreds of unsold Cybertrucks are piled up in parking lots at defunct shopping malls and abandoned apartment complexes. Meanwhile, Tesla’s decision to go all in on robotaxis and Optimus robots has yet to become a reality. This, my friends, is an object lesson in innovation management. Future-focused leaders have long known that a central challenge of innovation is how to balance the Now and the Next. If you focus too much on today’s business, you open yourself up to being blindsided by the future when it shows up. But if you spend all your time on the Next, you risk taking your eye off the ball of today’s business. At the very least, you need to do both. Ideally, what you do right now helps prepare you for what comes next. Letting Go of the Three Horizon Framework Twenty-five years ago, Baghai, Coley, and White proposed the “Three Horizon” framework for thinking about growth. Horizon 1 included near-term activities around the core business. Horizon 2 represented emerging opportunities like expanding into adjacent markets and product lines. Horizon 3 encompassed profitable growth down the road, including things like new ventures and long-term research projects. The framework seemed to make sense on the face of it. However, people who tried to put it into practice discovered a fatal flaw. MORE FOR YOU Microsoft Confirms New Free Update Deadline For Windows Users Trump Says He Won’t Use Luxury Plane From Qatar After Leaving Office—Here’s What We Know Samsung Drops Galaxy S25 Price In Major New Sale The problem was time. As Steve Blank first pointed out in the Harvard Business Review, the Three Horizon framework assumed that Horizon 1 ideas could be developed in the short term, say within a year. Horizon 2 expansions might happen in two or three years. And Horizon 3 innovations could take up to five years. But that turned out not to be true. Blank showed that technology had made it possible for major disruptions to be delivered in the same amount of time as incremental line extensions. In the time that Hertz rental cars came out with a new Five Star upgrade program, Travis Kalanick could launch Uber. Time horizons were misleading. Seeking alternatives, other scholars came up with frameworks that focused on whether innovations were core, adjacent, or transformational to your business. But these models shared another problem with the Three Horizon framework: it ultimately doesn’t matter if something is new to you. Innovations matter if they’re new to the world. If you’re a candy bar company that branches out into making soft drinks, these models may make you think you’ve come up with a breakthrough innovation. But how innovative is another soda in a world that’s already flooded with them? How Big is Your Innovation? What all those frameworks did get right is the idea that there are different kinds of innovation. The original iPhone was simply a bigger deal than the iPhone 16. The investment needed to launch it was greater. The challenge for people to understand how to use it was greater. And the risk of failure was higher. Hertz’s new loyalty program had a lower risk/reward profile than the initial launch of Uber. My colleagues and I at Jump have found it helpful to think of three kinds of innovations based on how new they are to the world. Sustaining innovations are incremental improvements on existing products or services. The iPhone 14, 15, and 16 are all sustaining innovations. With every new version, the camera gets a little better, the screen gets a little sharper, and the battery hopefully lasts a little bit longer. Every new detergent from Procter & Gamble that whitens your laundry 10% better is a sustaining innovation. Sustaining innovations are the things that businesses need to do regularly just to stay in the game. Breakout innovations are products and services that change the rules or significantly up the level of play in an existing category. The iPhone 5c, launched back in 2013, was the first iPhone to come in multiple colors. Breakout innovations can capture a lot of attention and have an immediate spike in sales. However, breakout innovations don’t create a new category. And they often fall back down to earth as quickly as they shot up. Businesses need to launch a few breakout innovations just to stay relevant and top of mind with customers—but they shouldn’t expect them to deliver long-term growth. Disruptive innovations are the things that fundamentally change a market, often creating new categories or significantly transforming existing ones. The first iPhone was a disruptive innovation. So was the original Uber service. Disruptive innovations have a much higher risk profile. And they can take a while to hockey-stick as they move through the adoption curve. Sometimes, disruptive innovations can get stuck being used only by early adopters until people figure out how to really use them. Take a Portfolio Approach In a perfect world, companies would be adept at all three kinds of innovations, and they’d take a portfolio approach to managing them. In practice, that’s not the case. My teammates and I at Jump are often asked to help evaluate the effectiveness of a company’s innovation program. One of our first questions is always whether the business has different metrics, milestones, and investment plans for sustaining, breakout, and disruptive innovations. Often, the answer is no. If a company only has one set of metrics, it usually means they have a system optimized for sustaining innovations. And that system is likely killing off all their biggest ideas. They’re not balancing the Now and the Next. Which brings us to Tesla. Undoubtedly, the first Tesla Model S was a disruptive innovation. It functioned like no other car on the road at the time. You had to drive one to understand how different it was from traditional automobiles. It demanded a sizable change in behavior by asking owners to charge their vehicles instead of stopping at a gas station. The original Model S was followed by several sustaining innovations, including all-wheel drive and performance models. Additional sustaining innovations filled out Tesla’s portfolio with the Models X, Y, and 3. And then Tesla’s innovation pipeline in its core vehicle lines slowed. Most car manufacturers make noticeable updates to their models every few years to keep their product line fresh. Not Tesla. Without those sustaining innovations, sales would inevitably decline. Instead, Musk and his team turned their attention to the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is a classic breakout innovation. It brought a lot of buzz to the company. You had to see one to understand what all the buzz was about. But it was destined to go away as quickly as it came. Tesla execs would have been wise to limit their production. And then there are the robots. As I’ve written about previously, Tesla’s robotaxis may create a disruptive new model for mobility. Someday. Maybe. If and when they show up. Until then, however, the company is leaving large holes in its portfolio, while essentially choosing to bet the farm on a totally different model. Betting the farm is the opposite of smart portfolio management. Consumers and critics have been clamoring for more sustaining innovations from Tesla, including an entry-level vehicle. No such car seems to be forthcoming. It’s almost as if Elon Musk is bored. Tesla may represent a unique inversion of what we normally see: a company so obsessed with the Next, that they have little interest in effectively managing the Now. That’s an important lesson for the rest of us: balance isn’t optional—it’s essential. Sustaining, breakout, and disruptive innovations each play a role, and your job is to actively manage that mix. That means designing different funding models, assigning teams with different cultures and mandates, and resisting the urge to apply a single yardstick to every idea. Innovation portfolios aren't theoretical—they're how future-focused leaders balance the Now and the Next. The companies that win tomorrow won’t be the ones chasing headlines. They’ll be the ones quietly, consistently building portfolios that let them learn fast, adapt faster, and never fall too far behind. The future belongs to those who manage for it. Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades