It's putting your success in the hands of the gods. Adopting a two track approach The answer is to adopt a two track approach and run both tracks in parallel. The first track is tactical. The second strategic. A possible answer was hinted at by Alan Cooper in his interview with uidesign.net, earlier this year.
Business tends to look at the competition.
Technology people tend to look at yesterday's technology and extend it. This provides the answer. This tells us how we can move forward, bring product to market, keep many different and diverse functions of the business happy and still bring a superior product with a good user experience to market. We must develop the superior product in parallel whilst focusing tactically on what is possible and what the competition are doing. Striking a balance between allocation of resources across the tactical and the strategic initiatives.