Finding the Balance That Drives Sustainable Growth

By Tom Glover, Chief Revenue Officer at Responsive Technology Partners 

As a business leader, you’re caught in a constant tug-of-war. On one side, there’s the allure of new technologies promising competitive advantages and growth opportunities. On the other, there’s your existing infrastructure—perhaps aging, increasingly complex, and consuming more resources just to maintain. This is the fundamental tension between technology debt and innovation, and finding the right balance might be the most important strategic decision you make this year.

After helping hundreds of businesses navigate this precise challenge over my 35+ years in technology leadership, I’ve seen firsthand how the wrong approach can stall growth or, worse, create unsustainable risk. But I’ve also witnessed how getting this balance right can become a powerful catalyst for sustainable business growth.

Understanding Technology Debt: More Than Just Old Systems

Technology debt (sometimes called technical debt) extends far beyond outdated hardware or software. It’s the cumulative consequence of choosing expedient short-term technology solutions over more sustainable long-term approaches. Like financial debt, it accrues interest—increasing complexity, growing maintenance costs, expanding vulnerability surfaces, and diminishing returns on your technology investments.

Technology debt manifests in several forms:

• Legacy systems that no longer align with business needs but remain critical to operations

• Fragmented solutions implemented as point fixes without considering the broader technology ecosystem

• Outdated security practices that leave your business vulnerable to evolving threats

• Knowledge silos where critical system understanding resides with just a few employees

• Shadow IT where departments implement unauthorized solutions to bypass perceived obstacles

Many business leaders I work with initially view technology debt as merely a cost center to be minimized. This perspective misses something crucial: all technology environments accrue debt naturally over time. The goal isn’t to eliminate it entirely (which is virtually impossible) but to manage it strategically.

The Innovation Imperative: Moving Beyond “Keeping the Lights On”

While managing technology debt is essential, innovation remains the lifeblood of business growth. In 2025, innovation isn’t optional—it’s how businesses survive and thrive amid constant disruption.

True innovation goes beyond simply implementing new tools. It’s about leveraging technology to:

• Create new revenue streams or business models

• Enhance customer experiences in ways competitors can’t easily replicate

• Streamline operations to improve margins and resource allocation

• Build more resilient and adaptive business operations

The challenge many businesses face is that technology debt and innovation compete for the same limited resources—budget, staff attention, time, and strategic focus. When organizations allocate too much to maintaining legacy systems, innovation suffers. Conversely, pursuing innovation while ignoring mounting technology debt creates fragile systems prone to failure, security breaches, and inefficiency.

The True Cost of Imbalance

In my work with mid-market businesses, I’ve witnessed the consequences of getting this balance wrong:

A manufacturing firm focused exclusively on maintaining its legacy ERP system, allocating over 80% of its IT budget to support aging infrastructure. While they kept operations running, competitors implemented IoT solutions that dramatically improved production efficiency. The innovation gap eventually forced them into an emergency digital transformation that cost 3x what a planned transition would have required.

Conversely, a professional services firm chased every new technology trend without addressing underlying infrastructure problems. They implemented cloud solutions, AI tools, and sophisticated analytics platforms—all layered over fragmented, poorly documented core systems. When they experienced a major outage, recovery took weeks rather than hours, costing millions in lost productivity and client trust.

Both scenarios stem from the same problem: failing to strategically balance technology debt management with focused innovation.

The 40/40/20 Principle: A Framework for Balance

Through years of helping businesses navigate this challenge, I’ve developed what I call the 40/40/20 principle—a starting framework for resource allocation that can be adjusted based on your specific business context:

• 40% toward managing and reducing technology debt: This includes technical upgrades, system refactoring, security improvements, and process optimization of existing systems.

• 40% toward strategic innovation: These investments should align with specific business outcomes, whether improving customer experiences, enabling new business models, or creating competitive advantages.

• 20% toward exploration and emerging technology evaluation: This “innovation sandbox” allows for testing new approaches without putting core business operations at risk.

This framework provides guardrails rather than rigid rules. For businesses with significant accumulated technology debt, the ratio might temporarily shift to 60/30/10 until they’ve addressed critical issues. Companies in highly competitive or disrupted markets might need a 30/50/20 approach to accelerate innovation.

Five Strategies for Finding Your Optimal Balance

Every business faces unique challenges in balancing technology debt and innovation. However, these five strategies provide a starting point for finding your optimal approach:

1. Conduct a technology debt assessment

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. A comprehensive technology debt assessment examines your entire technology environment across multiple dimensions:

• Infrastructure age and supportability

• Application architecture and maintainability

• Security posture and compliance status

• Documentation quality and knowledge distribution

• Integration complexity and failure points

The goal isn’t just to identify problems but to quantify their business impact. For instance, don’t just inventory aging servers—calculate the productivity cost of slower performance and increased downtime risk. This business impact focus transforms technology debt from an IT problem into a strategic business concern that leadership can prioritize appropriately.

2. Align innovation investments with strategic outcomes

Not all innovation creates equal value. The most successful businesses focus innovation efforts on areas with direct strategic impact rather than implementing technology for its own sake.

Begin by identifying your business’s key strategic priorities—whether enhancing customer experiences, improving operational efficiency, or developing new products. Then evaluate potential innovation investments based on their ability to advance these priorities, considering both short-term gains and long-term strategic positioning.

This outcomes-based approach prevents “shiny object syndrome” where businesses chase the latest technology trends without clear business justification. Instead, it ensures innovation efforts remain connected to measurable business value.

3. Implement portfolio management for technology investments

Managing the balance between technology debt and innovation becomes more effective when approached as a portfolio rather than a series of individual decisions. A portfolio approach allows leadership to:

• Evaluate the aggregate risk across all technology initiatives

• Ensure appropriate diversification between maintenance and innovation

• Identify and address resource constraints before they become bottlenecks

• Make explicit trade-off decisions when resources are limited

Many businesses I work with implement quarterly technology portfolio reviews where they assess the current allocation across debt management and innovation initiatives, adjusting as needed based on changing business conditions and emergent opportunities.

4. Adopt incremental approaches to both debt reduction and innovation

One of the most significant shifts I’ve seen in successful technology management is moving away from massive, high-risk projects toward more incremental approaches. This applies to both technology debt reduction and innovation initiatives.

Rather than complete system replacements, consider modernizing components incrementally while maintaining overall system integrity. Instead of comprehensive digital transformation programs, implement focused innovations that deliver specific business outcomes while integrating with existing systems.

This incremental approach reduces risk, accelerates value delivery, and creates natural opportunities to adjust course based on actual results rather than theoretical projections.

5. Build a technology governance framework that balances stability and agility

Effective governance provides the foundation for balancing technology debt and innovation. This requires creating appropriate structures for different types of technology decisions:

• Standardized processes for routine changes that emphasize efficiency and risk management

• Accelerated pathways for innovation initiatives with appropriate guardrails

• Clear decision rights that balance technical expertise with business insight

• Metrics that evaluate both technology reliability and innovation outcomes

The most effective governance frameworks recognize that different technologies require different approaches. Core systems that support critical business functions need stronger stability controls, while customer-facing digital experiences might benefit from more agile governance focused on rapid iteration.

Recognizing the Warning Signs of Imbalance

Even with the best intentions, the balance between technology debt and innovation can drift over time. Recognizing the warning signs early allows for correction before significant problems emerge:

Signs of overemphasizing technology debt management:

• Innovation initiatives consistently delayed or underfunded

• Growing competitive gap in digital capabilities

• Increasing difficulty attracting and retaining technology talent

• Business units implementing shadow IT to bypass perceived barriers

Signs of overemphasizing innovation:

• Rising frequency and severity of operational incidents

• Increasing complexity without corresponding business value

• Growing security vulnerabilities and compliance gaps

• Difficulty implementing new solutions due to technical constraints

Regular assessment of these indicators helps maintain the right balance over time, allowing for course corrections before imbalances create significant business risks.

Case Study: Finding the Right Balance

Let’s explore how one business successfully navigated this challenge. A regional financial services firm found itself struggling with an aging core banking platform that consumed over 70% of their technology budget just for maintenance. At the same time, fintech competitors were rapidly introducing digital capabilities that threatened their market position.

Rather than simply replacing their core platform (a high-risk, multi-year effort) or chasing competitive features without addressing underlying issues, they adopted a balanced approach:

1. They performed a technology debt assessment that identified specific components of their core platform creating the greatest constraints and highest maintenance burden.
2. They implemented a three-year modernization roadmap focused on incrementally replacing these high-debt components while keeping the overall system stable.
3. They created a parallel innovation track focused specifically on customer-facing capabilities, leveraging API layers to integrate with their evolving core platform.
4. They established a governance framework that allocated resources explicitly between debt reduction and innovation, with quarterly portfolio reviews to maintain the appropriate balance.

The results were transformative. Within 18 months, they reduced maintenance costs by 35% while simultaneously launching digital capabilities that reversed customer attrition. Most importantly, they created a sustainable approach to technology that continues to balance stability and innovation as market conditions evolve.

Practical Next Steps

If you’re struggling to find the right balance between managing technology debt and driving innovation, consider these practical next steps:

• Assess your current allocation of technology resources between debt management and innovation. Many businesses discover they’re spending over 80% on maintaining existing systems, leaving insufficient resources for strategic advancement.

• Identify your highest-impact technology debt by focusing on areas that create the greatest constraints on business agility or pose the most significant risks.

• Evaluate your innovation portfolio against strategic business priorities, potentially consolidating efforts to focus on fewer, higher-impact initiatives.

• Develop explicit criteria for technology investment decisions that factor in both immediate needs and long-term technology sustainability.

• Create appropriate governance mechanisms that provide oversight while enabling both effective debt management and focused innovation.

The balance between managing technology debt and driving innovation isn’t a one-time decision but an ongoing strategic priority that requires regular reassessment as your business and technology landscapes evolve.

The Strategic Advantage of Balance

In my experience, businesses that establish the right balance between technology debt management and innovation create significant competitive advantages:

• They avoid the disruption and expense of emergency modernization efforts

• They maintain the agility to respond to market changes and opportunities

• They create more predictable technology expenditures over time

• They build more resilient operations less susceptible to disruption

Most importantly, they transform technology from a constraint into a catalyst for sustainable growth. In today’s technology-driven business environment, few strategic decisions have more impact on your long-term success.

Tom Glover is Chief Revenue Officer at Responsive Technology Partners, specializing in cybersecurity and risk management. With over 35 years of experience helping organizations navigate the complex intersection of technology and risk, Tom provides practical insights for business leaders facing today’s security challenges. 

Want to discuss how your business can better balance technology debt and innovation? Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit ResponsiveTechnologyPartners.com.