The Wonder-Explore-Make-Impact Incubation Gate
A four-stage vocabulary with 6-pager gates that lets a big company incubate new bets without prematurely scaling them
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Atlassian's Point A incubator runs every internal bet through four named stages, each answering a specific question before more resources are committed. Because the whole company learns the vocabulary, saying 'we're in Explore' instantly sets expectations for what is (and isn't) validated, defusing premature demands for budget, architecture reviews, or process compliance. Each gate is a 15-minute-read 6-pager reviewed live by founders and business leaders who can advance, kill, or reroute the bet.
Origin
Developed inside Atlassian's Point A internal incubator program, which Jira Product Discovery went through as one of its first bets; Tanguy Crusson's team effectively piloted the four-stage structure for later teams.
Core principles
- 01A shared, company-wide vocabulary for maturity stages is itself a protective mechanism
- 02Each stage answers ONE class of question and nothing more
- 03Reassess every three to six months rather than demanding an ROI date up front
- 04Judge whether the right team is answering the right questions, not the raw outcome yet
How to run it
- 1
Wonder — prove the problem and the 'why now'
Prove there is a real problem area and market, articulate very clearly why the company should move there and why now, and gather enough data to validate those claims. No solutions yet.
Pro tip Bake the sense-of-urgency trigger ('why now') into this stage explicitly — it is the thing most internal pitches fail on.
Watch out Skipping the 'why now' leaves the bet parked on a shelf even when everyone agrees it's a good idea.
- 2
Explore — validate solutions, not build them
Explore solutions by getting customers who raised a problem to play back that a proposed solution would address it. Prototype in tools like Figma across dozens of calls; do not ship code just to 'see what sticks'.
Pro tip If the solution needs no new technology (only new UX/workflows), you can fully validate in prototypes before writing a line of code.
Watch out Explore is NOT 'build it and throw it out there' — that invites teams to critique architecture before customer demand is proven.
- 3
Make — build it in stages: alpha, beta, GA-ready
Now actually make it happen, moving through alpha then beta then GA readiness. This is where budget and developers get requested, so advancing to Make signals real resource commitment.
Pro tip When you tell leadership you want to move from Explore to Make, they already know you'll ask for engineers — the vocabulary pre-frames the ask.
- 4
Impact — ship to GA and measure the real business
The product is ready for general availability; now measure its impact on the business and keep monitoring. It turns into a real business from this point.
In the wild
JPD was one of ~100 pitches that entered Point A over several quarters; only three products made it through all stages. The team used the four-stage language in every cross-team conversation, and the gate reviews were 6-pagers read for ~15 minutes by founders and business-line heads who then Q&A'd to decide go/no-go.
→ JPD reached GA and became one of the fastest-growing products in Atlassian history (8,000 customers a year after launch).
Common mistakes
Treating an early bet with the same metrics as a mature product
For years Atlassian judged new bets on monthly active users like established products, which pushes teams to over-expose an unfinished product and churn the very customers they'll struggle to win back.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product and innovation leaders inside a large, resourced company standing up an internal incubator or defending a single new bet
Not ideal for
A lean startup with one product and no internal politics to manage — the staged vocabulary is overhead you don't need
From the transcript
“we had four stages called Wander explore make an impact where in the first stage it was all about proving that there was a problem…”
“everyone atasan knew these four stages Wonder explore make impact”
“we basically write a um six pager that um looks at all the different aspects of all the questions that we want to answer”
“everyone reads that page for about 15 minutes and then question answers comments”
“they know they're going to ask from budget right because they need developers now”
From the episode
Hard-won lessons building 0 to 1 inside Atlassian
Tanguy Crusson (Head of Jira Product Discovery)