Krishnan Naganathan

In India, Innovation and Innovators Don’t Get Many Second Chances.
That’s why innovation decisions matter so much.

Innovation decisions in India unfold under fragile ecosystems, evolving capital markets, limited tolerance for failure, and deep personal and organisational risk.
Global best practices often fail not because they’re wrong, but because they’re not adapted to Indian realities.

In environments where failure is unforgiving, wisdom matters as much as speed.

Advising Indian leaders and innovators on making innovation decisions that endure

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Innovation Decision Traps Indian Innovators Struggle With

In India, innovation rarely fails because innovators lack intelligence, intent, or effort. It fails because innovators are forced to make high-stakes decisions early, in environments where failure is unforgiving and second chances are rare.

The most damaging traps don’t appear as mistakes. They appear as reasonable decisions made with incomplete signals.

1. Choosing the Wrong Innovation Problem

This often locks them into sub-optimal solutions, too early. Innovators rush to define solutions before the problem is fully understood — often because the pressure to “show progress” is intense.

The hidden cost: Once a solution is chosen, organisations become emotionally and politically invested.

In India, choosing the wrong problem is not just wasteful — it is reputationally damaging.

2. Selecting the Wrong Innovation Pathway

Wrong pathways arise due to a poor understanding of where economic surplus will come from. Innovators pursue ideas without clarity on how innovation will eventually generate economic surplus — across cost, differentiation, scale, or strategic control.

The hidden cost: Innovation succeeds technically but fails commercially — or delivers value that competitors quickly appropriate.

Not all innovation paths are equal. Some generate learning. Few generate surplus.

3. Applying Digital Innovation Methods to Every Innovation Problem

Methods designed for software and digital products are applied indiscriminately to hardware, deep tech, manufacturing, and systems innovation.

The hidden cost: Physical constraints, regulatory cycles, supply chains, and reliability requirements are underestimated — leading to unrealistic timelines and fragile solutions.

What works for code does not always work for atoms.

4. Pushing Market Adoption Before Technical Readiness

Innovators push for pilots, customers, and market traction before the technology is stable, reliable, or scalable.

The hidden cost: Early failures damage credibility — not just of the product, but of the innovator and the organisation behind it.

In India, a failed pilot is remembered far longer than a successful prototype.

5. Ignoring Willingness to Pay, Ecosystem Feasibility, and True Viability

Innovation teams validate interest, intent, and pilots — but postpone hard questions around pricing power, ecosystem readiness, and long-term viability.

The hidden cost: Products gain users but fail to become businesses. Innovators mistake adoption for sustainability.

Desirability without willingness to pay is not validation — it is illusion.

6. Failing to Articulate and Test Venture-Building Hypotheses Explicitly

Innovators execute activities without explicitly articulating the hypotheses that connect technology, market, business model, and scale.

The hidden cost: When things stall or fail, teams cannot diagnose why. Learning is slow, political, and retrospective.

Without explicit hypotheses, innovation cannot learn — it can only hope.

These traps are not signs of incompetence.

They are symptoms of innovation being attempted in an environment where the cost of being wrong is unusually high.

Avoiding these traps does not require more courage.

It requires better judgment, sequencing, and decision discipline.

Developing the Right Innovation

Innovation success is less about executing fast and more about choosing wisely.
If the right problem, solution, business model, and roadmap are chosen, execution becomes far easier.

Innovation is a double challenge. First, developing the right innovation. Then, delivering it right. Most failures occur long before execution—when early decisions lock teams into fragile paths.

Developing the Right Innovation

Before execution, judgment matters more than speed.

Choosing the Right Problem

Most innovation failures begin with the wrong choice of problem.

This pillar is about judging whether a problem truly matters—economically, strategically, and over time.

Choosing the Right Solution & Venture Design

Even the right problem can be undermined by the wrong solution or venture logic.

This pillar focuses on selecting solution paths and business designs that are defensible, reversible, and fit for purpose.

Delivering the Innovation Right

Once direction is set, discipline replaces optimism.

Ensuring Readiness & Feasibility

Innovation must survive the real world, not just controlled pilots.

This pillar examines whether solutions are technically reliable, operationally feasible, and ready for exposure.

Ensuring Viability & Scale

Early traction does not guarantee endurance.

This pillar focuses on whether innovation can generate lasting value through pricing power, cost discipline, ecosystem fit, and scale advantage.

→ Explore the full framework

Where This Thinking Is Applied

This way of thinking about innovation is not academic.
It is applied in real decisions, under real constraints, across very different innovation contexts—where uncertainty is high, and the cost of being wrong is real.

Startups & Founders

Working with founders who are navigating early, irreversible decisions—where capital is limited, credibility is fragile, and the wrong problem or pathway can consume years.
The focus is on building innovation that creates real economic surplus, not just momentum.

Growth-Stage Ventures

Supporting teams as they move from experimentation to scale—where early innovation rent must be defended, extended, or reconfigured as markets mature and competitors catch up.
This is often where good ideas quietly fail without disciplined decision-making.

Legacy & Family Businesses

Advising established organisations that have mastered operational excellence but struggle with innovation choices.
The challenge is not execution, but choosing innovation paths that do not undermine existing strengths while creating future relevance.

Investors, Family Offices & Boards

Helping investment decision-makers evaluate innovation beyond narratives and surface-level metrics—by examining uncertainty, durability of advantage, and the sources of innovation rent.
This supports better capital allocation across early, growth, and transition-stage ventures.

Innovation Ecosystems & Public Programs

Engaging with ecosystem builders and public innovation programs to align funding, evaluation, and milestones with learning and uncertainty reduction—not activity alone.
This helps innovation capital flow to where it can compound, not just deploy.

Across these contexts, the work is the same.
Making fewer irreversible mistakes early—and building innovation that can survive uncertainty, imitation, and time.

How I Work

My engagements are structured around decisions, not deliverables.
The objective is not activity, but reducing uncertainty and increasing the probability that innovation efforts create durable economic value.

Fractional Innovation Officer

Working alongside founders or leadership teams as a long-term thinking partner on critical innovation decisions.
This role focuses on shaping the direction of innovation, sequencing learning, and building decision discipline across the innovation journey—without adding organisational overhead.

Startup Mentoring & Advisory

Supporting founders through early and growth-stage decisions where problem selection, solution pathways, and business model choices have irreversible consequences.
Engagements are oriented around hypothesis clarity, uncertainty reduction, and the creation of innovation rent.

Boards, Family Offices & Investment Committees

Advising decision-makers on evaluating innovation opportunities under uncertainty—beyond narratives, pitch decks, and surface-level metrics.
This includes assessing durability of advantage, sources of innovation rent, and alignment between capital, capability, and risk appetite.

Masterclasses & Executive Workshops

Designing focused sessions for founders, innovation teams, and leadership groups to build shared understanding of innovation economics, uncertainty management, and decision traps.
These are structured to change how innovation decisions are made—not just how they are discussed.

Across all engagement models, the role remains the same.
Helping innovators and decision-makers make fewer irreversible mistakes—and build innovation that can survive uncertainty, imitation, and time.

Writing & Thinking

I write regularly on innovation, uncertainty, and value creation—exploring how ideas move from novelty to durable economic impact, particularly in Indian contexts.

Selected Articles on Innovation

Innovation Is Not a Pitch. It’s a Claim on Future Value

Innovation Rent: The Missing Link in Valuation Logic

Deep Tech: Misunderstood and Misused

Why Great Ideas Fail: The Theranos Lesson on Innovation Evolution, TRLs, and Misapplied Models

Prototyping the Venture: Why Great Ideas Fail and What to Do Before Your MVP

→ Read more

Books

Some of this thinking has been developed more fully in books, where frameworks, case studies, and economic logic are explored in depth.