Horizon
R&D. Crazy ideas. No deadlines. No roadmap.
Horizon builds things nobody requested. Most fail. One changes the company.
Horizon is Tribar's license to explore. No quarterly targets, no stakeholder demos, no "when will this ship?" pressure. They work on problems that are too early for a JIRA ticket. Most Horizon projects go nowhere. The ones that don't redefine what the company does.
“Most fail. One changes the company.”
— Horizon's acceptance of failure as the cost of breakthrough.
What we measure
Exploration breadth — is each Horizon explorer generating enough surface area for luck?
Cross-pollination — are Horizon's ideas reaching other tribes?
Option value — how many strategic options has Horizon created for the company?
Transition success rate — do Horizon projects that graduate actually succeed in production?
Innovation culture health — does the rest of the company feel permission to explore?
◷ Rhythms
Show & tell
Horizon demos whatever they're working on — working prototype, failed experiment, interesting paper, weird idea. No polish required.
Radical transparency about what exploration looks like (including failure).
Portfolio review
Horizon reviews every active project. Keep, kill, or incubate? No project survives without showing signal.
Prevents "zombie projects" that no one believes in but no one kills.
Horizon expedition
One week. The entire Horizon tribe goes off-site with no agenda. Visit a lab. Attend a conference. Build something ridiculous. Read papers in a cabin.
Deliberate disconnection from company reality to find new signals.
Innovation day
Company-wide. No sprint work. Everyone works on anything. Horizon facilitates, judges, and incubates the best ideas.
Democratizes exploration beyond Horizon.
Tools & artifacts
Horizon portfolio board
frameworkVisual portfolio of all active Horizon projects. Each project has: hypothesis, signal level, time invested, kill criteria, next decision point.
Kill criteria template
documentEvery Horizon project starts with explicit kill criteria: "If X hasn't happened by Y date, this project is dead." Removes emotional attachment.
Handoff package
documentStandardized handoff template for any project transitioning to Delta: what was learned, what works, what doesn't, what's unknown, recommended next steps.
Idea submission platform
platformAnyone in the company can submit an idea. Horizon reviews monthly. Best ideas get a "Horizon exploration grant" — 2 weeks of Horizon time to validate.
Tech radar
documentLiving document tracking emerging technologies across four categories: adopt, trial, assess, hold. Updated quarterly.
Responsibilities
- Long-term research and exploration
- Prototype development of unproven ideas
- Emerging technology evaluation
- Academic partnerships
- Patentable inventions
- "What if?" — full-time
- Technology scouting and trend analysis
- Internal incubation of new product concepts
Deliverables
Not measured in quarters. Have any Horizon projects changed the company's direction in the last 2 years?
Relationships
How Horizon connects to every other tribe — what flows, when, and through what ritual.
Technology prototypes, feasibility assessments, handoff packages for incubated projects, new tech recommendations
Emerging technology evaluations, architecture recommendations for future platform investments
Strategic options — technologies that could create new markets or disrupt existing ones
Research findings, failed experiment documentation, technology evaluation reports
To remain unconstrained, exceptional, and ahead of people focused on ordinary limits.
This is a protective pattern, not a verdict. It describes what can happen when the tribe's gift is driven by fear, anger, grief, scarcity, or status.
An idea is evaluated too early, constrained by delivery, or compared with present-day obligations.
Horizon can escape into novelty, become contemptuous of maintenance, destabilize commitments, or chase distinction through originality.
Partners carry the practical consequences while Horizon preserves the identity of being visionary and misunderstood.
Imagination with return paths: exploration that respects constraints and hands learning back to the collective.
What could exist five years from now?
The core Horizon identity — finds emerging technologies and unproven ideas worth exploring
Builds prototypes, proofs-of-concept, minimum viable somethings
Sharpens the investment thesis — when a prototype shows promise, optimizes the path to productization
Ensures Horizon doesn't become a boondoggle — tracks what was learned, even from failures
Transitions successful prototypes into Delta — creates the bridge from research to production
Sets the 5–10 year technical vision — the future that seems impossible today but inevitable tomorrow