Future-Backward Aspirational Strategy (Big-s)
Design-led, ~6-month process that imagines distinct 5–10 year futures and prototypes them as concept cars.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
The aspirational counterpart to the small-s playbook, for when strategy needs an exciting, cool component beyond just solving today's problems. It works future-backward from the company mission over a 3–10 year horizon, is led by design and UXR rather than PMs, and is intentionally more open-ended and greenfield. Both work streams ultimately merge into one roadmap.
Origin
Chandra Janakiraman's framing, motivated by Elon Musk's line that 'life has to be about more than just solving problems'; the prototype step borrows the automobile industry's 'concept car' idea.
Core principles
- 01Every company needs an aspirational, cool component to strategy, not just problem-solving.
- 02It's more fluid and greenfield than small-s, and should be led by open-minded, blue-sky people (design/UXR), not metric-movers.
- 03Concept-car prototypes are never shipped whole — they exist for inspiration and to harvest nuggets that graduate into production.
- 04The roadmap is a bridge built from both small-s and big-s streams, like two tributaries merging into one river.
How to run it
- 1
Set the backdrop and mission
Start from company mission and vision, then do groundwork on long-term cultural, social, competitive and technological trends as triggers for ideas.
- 2
Future-oriented leadership interviews
Interview leaders with a different goal — generating long-term futures. Ask what a day in a user's life looks like in five years, what the product looks like in 5–10 years, why the world is better in 10 years, and what the most exciting version of that view is.
- 3
Cluster into three distinct futures
Cluster the input into three fairly distinct, cohesive descriptions of the future — each with different properties. (For future-of-travel: fully autonomous travel; extreme speed; no travel / virtual travel.)
- 4
Build concept-car prototypes
Generate prototypes with explicit learning goals — treat them as concept cars meant for inspiration, not commercialization.
Watch out Don't try to ship a concept car whole; the aim is inspiration and reusable nuggets.
- 5
Research, then live-test the winners
Run concept/prototype testing with a handful of users via UXR, eliminate and combine elements, establish winning components, then push what's winning into live product testing to see if it scales.
In the wild
Janakiraman uses travel to show three distinct futures: fully autonomous travel with little human involvement; extreme speed across the world; and no travel at all — virtual travel that still delivers the feeling and goals of travel.
→ Three properties-distinct futures to prototype as concept cars.
At VRChat the product team leads small-s work while the design team leads big-s work as parallel streams.
→ Both streams flow into one roadmap — 'two tributaries that merge into one river.'
Common mistakes
Letting metric-focused people lead it
People who instinctively ask 'how will this move our metric' constrain blue-sky thinking; hand the reins to open-minded, creative, low-ego integrators instead.
Rushing it
Big-s needs up to about six months of space to generate something genuinely exciting; compressing it defeats the purpose.
Is it for you?
Best for
A design/UXR-led team at a company that wants an inspiring 5–10 year aspirational direction alongside its near-term problem-solving strategy.
Not ideal for
Teams under immediate business pressure to fix current product problems, or those without patience for a ~6-month open-ended exploration.
From the transcript
“there's this um interesting quote by Elon Musk which is life has to be about more than just solving problems”
“it typically takes you know longer uh potentially up to about six months”
“what does a day in the life of a user look like in in sort of five years what does a product look like in…”
“you actually generate prototypes with sort of learning goals and think of these prototypes as concept cars”
“the interesting thing about concept cars is they're never commercialized they're they're sort of often produced for inspiration”
“this whole thing is typically LED not by the the sort of the PM team but by Design and uxr”
“both work streams ultimately flow into one road map it's almost like you know two tributaries that ultimately merge into one River”
From the episode
An operator’s guide to product strategy
Chandra Janakiraman (CPO at VRChat, ex-Meta, Headspace, Zyng