Imagine spending £100M+ and three years replacing an old ERP system with a shiny new Oracle Cloud implementation.
You finally go live.
And within months your finance team is back on… spreadsheets.
That actually happened to Birmingham City Council in 2024. Costs tripled, the system regressed operations, and it helped push the council into effective bankruptcy.
Welcome to the new normal: obsolete on arrival.
I’ve lived it from the inside. When I was involved in the AWS Technical Blog review process, we’d pour weeks (sometimes months) into crafting the perfect post about a cutting-edge solution. By the time it published? The tech had moved on. Claude 3.5 became 4.x. GPT-4o became 5.x. The “latest and greatest” was already legacy.
Not a day goes by without a new AI tool dropping that solves exactly the problem you’ve been grinding on for weeks. Sometimes it’s magic. Often it’s a rabbit hole that wastes more time than it saves.
But here’s the brutal part: Your great idea you have been talking to AI about... tons of other people are having the exact same conversation with AI right now. Your window of advantage is measured in days, not quarters.
Perfection is dead. Long-running initiatives are structurally doomed.
Yet there’s one anchor in the chaos.
Jeff Bezos put it perfectly (see video):
“In a world that’s rapidly changing… what changes very slowly is customer needs… You would never expect 10 years from now a customer saying ‘I love Amazon, I just wish you’d delivered a little more slowly’ or ‘I wish your prices were a little higher’… Human nature doesn’t change rapidly.”
Core customer desires are glacial. Everything else (tech, tools, competitors) sprints.
So the winning formula: Be stubborn on the vision (unchanging customer needs). Ruthlessly flexible on the details.
So how the hell do you innovate and build anything meaningful in 2026?
That’s exactly what the next four moves enable.
- Re-invent as little as possible AWS calls their conference “re:Invent”. I get it, but winners re-invent as little as humanly possible. Why build another design system when ShadCN, Radix, MUI, Tailwind UI are battle-tested and updated weekly? Bezos again (2008): focus on what makes your beer taste better. Not-Invented-Here is now extinction-level.
- Steal joy from consumer apps Stop guessing. Ask users: “What’s your favorite app outside work?” Nurse says TikTok? Don’t laugh. Ask: “If TikTok helped you on shift, what would that look like?” Gold: 15-second skill refreshers, peer reactions for protocols, personalized learning feeds. Port the joy. Weaponize it.
- 2-week user loops with radical candor Expose real users constantly. Demo every two weeks. Show exactly how their last feedback landed. Ignored something? Say it straight. Trust → better input → faster alignment to real needs.
- Smoke & mirrors > invisible refactors If the sprint was internal plumbing and users can’t feel it, don’t demo it. Push something flashy they can touch, even if partially mocked. Perceived speed keeps stakeholders bought in while you chase the stubborn vision.
The multi-year “strategic transformation” is dead. 2026 belongs to teams that lock onto unchanging customer needs and iterate the details at warp speed.
Your 2026 roadmap still has 18–36 month swim lanes? Rip it up!
What’s one unchanging customer need you’re getting stubborn about, and one detail you’re stopping reinventing? Drop it below. I read every comment.
About the author
Bo Lora is a pragmatic futurist and strategic advisor who seamlessly blends user experience expertise with cutting-edge web technology. With over 30 years of experience at industry leaders like Amazon, Dell, Travelocity, AT&T, BearingPoint (KPMG), Motorola, and USAA, Bo has established himself as a trusted expert in driving innovation and delivering exceptional user experiences across large-scale products and applications.
As a strategic leader, Bo guides cross-functional teams toward cohesive solutions that balance user needs with operational excellence. His vision extends beyond individual projects, shaping industry best practices through his active participation in the LinkedIn community and mentorship of UX designers, researchers, product managers, and engineers.
Bo embraces AI not as a replacement for human ingenuity but as an "exoskeleton" that empowers professionals to unlock productivity levels never seen before. His pragmatic approach seeks to harmonize human interaction with intelligent systems, removing inefficiencies while maintaining a user-centric focus. Now operating independently as a strategic advisor in healthcare and life sciences, Bo focuses on transforming clinical trials through advisory services, thought leadership (including co-authoring a book and preparing a TED talk), and innovative solutions to break down data silos and enhance interoperability. Bo's unique ability to identify opportunities, simplify complex challenges, and foster consensus empowers organizations to stay ahead of the curve, continuously evolving their digital offerings to meet the ever-changing demands of the modern landscape.
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