Get better at innovation.
Understand what is changing. Explore what could happen.
Decide what to build, what to learn and when to invest.
See how better innovation
decisions are made.
Innovation decisions become easier when uncertainty is made visible, evidence is connected to economics, and management can see what the next commitment actually depends on.
01
VENTURE INTELLIGENCE
Can a strong technology become a strong venture?
A technically differentiated AI-powered diagnostic equipment platform does not automatically constitute an investable venture. Technical capability must translate into adoption, utilisation, recurring economics and defensible value capture.
Trace the venture from technology and rights through clinical trust, beachhead adoption, utilisation economics and platform expansion. Then examine where value is created, how it is captured and what could make that value durable.
Technical progress creates the opportunity. Adoption and utilisation create the economics. Recurring revenue and defensibility determine whether the opportunity can become a valuable venture.
A strong technology is not necessarily a strong venture.
& Rights
Capability
Trust
Credibility
Adoption
Access
Economics
Expansion
Scale
Capture
Enterprise value
The installed equipment creates the opportunity to serve the customer.
Value depends on sustained use, not merely equipment placement.
Repeat economics can transform a product sale into a more durable venture.
02
INDUSTRY / TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION
Where will advantage emerge as an industry evolves?
Industries rarely evolve as a single system. Technologies, customer expectations, regulation, infrastructure and business models move at different speeds—shifting where differentiation and competitive advantage can be created.
Map the forces reshaping the industry across multiple time horizons. Examine how technologies and capabilities mature, where dependencies exist, and how market and regulatory changes alter the competitive landscape.
The map makes visible where capabilities are becoming standardised, where new constraints are emerging and where differentiated advantage may migrate next.
See what is changing—and when.
03
FUTURE SCENARIOS
What if the future doesn’t unfold the way your strategy assumes?
Strategy inevitably contains assumptions about the future. The danger is treating one expected future as a forecast and building plans around assumptions that may not survive major technological, economic, regulatory or environmental change.
Identify the uncertainties capable of materially changing the future, explore how they interact and construct a small number of plausible, internally coherent future worlds.
Instead of predicting which future will occur, management can identify choices that remain robust across futures, options worth preserving and signals that indicate which future may be emerging.
Four plausible futures. Different strategic choices.
INVESTMENT
SUSTAINABILITY
ACTION
Investment, technology and strong climate action reinforce sustainable growth.
Sustainable growthInvestment drives expansion while weak sustainability creates environmental and infrastructure stress.
Vulnerable growthTechnology and climate action advance, but weak investment limits jobs and broad-based growth.
Uneven transitionWeak investment, technology adoption and climate action reinforce economic and environmental decline.
Systemic vulnerability
04
INNOVATION EXECUTION
When is an innovation ready for the next investment?
Innovation teams often measure progress through activities completed, milestones reached and money spent. But these measures do not necessarily tell management whether the uncertainties that matter most have actually been resolved.
Reframe the innovation as a sequence of learning and investment decisions. Connect critical uncertainties to hypotheses, evidence requirements, decision gates and the economic consequences of what is learned.
As evidence improves, uncertainty falls and management earns the right—not the obligation—to make the next investment. Even a negative result can create value if it prevents a much larger unjustified commitment.
Don’t let investment get ahead of evidence.
05
INNOVATION RENT
Where does economic power migrate as an innovation evolves?
A superior technology can create significant customer value without allowing the innovator to capture much of it. For a thermal technology venture, remaining a component supplier could leave much of the economic power with OEMs and system integrators.
Examine how the innovation could move up the system: from material performance, to participation in thermal architecture, to a position within thermal optimisation infrastructure. At each stage, ask who creates value, who captures it and who controls the critical dependency.
The largest opportunity may not lie in selling more of the original material. Moving into architecture can increase integration and switching costs; moving toward infrastructure can create a stronger position from which value is controlled.
The technology may begin as a component. The economic opportunity may sit higher in the system.
breakthrough
Prove superior thermal performance and reliability.
architecture
Participate in system-level design and integration.
infrastructure
Optimise and control thermal performance at system level.
06
INNOVATION VALUATION
What is an innovation worth when much of its future is still uncertain?
Conventional valuation can create false precision when a deep-tech opportunity still contains major technical, adoption and commercial uncertainties. A single forecast disguises the fact that different evidence states can produce very different economic outcomes.
Model a range of plausible economic outcomes rather than one deterministic forecast. Combine scenario-based NPV, probability-weighted outcomes, simulation and options thinking with explicit evidence gates for future capital.
Value is not fixed at the start. Evidence changes the probability of future states and creates choices to continue, expand, defer or stop. The investment therefore contains both an expected economic value and the value of preserving future options.
Don’t force an uncertain future into a single valuation.
Model materially different economic futures.
Recognise that outcomes have different likelihoods.
See the distribution rather than only the average.
Value the right to act after more is learned.
Six questions that shape
innovation outcomes.
Innovation is rarely one decision. Different moments require different kinds of intelligence—from understanding how an industry is changing to deciding whether the next investment is justified.
the landscape
what to do
what it is worth
Tell me what decision you are facing. A few lines are enough.
Where are technology and competitive advantage moving? What is certain—and what remains uncertain?
See what is still emerging from research, what is rapidly becoming product, what is commoditising, and where new sources of advantage may emerge.
What futures should we prepare for? Where could the industry be in a decade or more?
Explore plausible futures, distinguish robust choices from contingent ones, and build a strategic roadmap that preserves options under uncertainty.
What must become true to turn innovation strategy into results?
Identify the critical uncertainties, evidence and milestones that unlock value—and determine when the evidence justifies major financial commitments.
Which innovation bets deserve more capital? What growth are we putting at risk?
Compare initiatives by strategic relevance, evidence, uncertainty and economic potential. See where projects have slipped and which bets deserve acceleration, experimentation or exit.
Can this innovation create, capture and sustain economic value?
Connect technology to adoption, economics, value capture and defensibility. Decide whether to invest, what must be proven and which options to trigger.
What is the opportunity worth given what has actually been proven?
Value the opportunity under uncertainty using scenario-based NPV and options thinking—linking value to evidence, probability, future choices and staged capital.
Let’s discuss the innovation
decision you are facing.
A few lines are enough. I’ll respond personally.
We work on the
innovation itself.
Not create another management system.
We bridge the gap between innovation strategy and getting a strategically important innovation to work.
01
FRAME & EXPLORE
Turn ambition into precise requirements.
Explore what could work.
Not turn strategy into another set of documents
or run another ideation exercise.
Turn ambition into precise requirements. Explore what could work.
Not turn strategy into another set of documents or run another ideation exercise.
What must become true and where could solutions exist?
Translate strategic intent into functional requirements and explicit success conditions. Then explore the scientific and technical solution space before converging on a preferred architecture.
02
ARCHITECT & PRIORITISE
Build evidence that reduces the
uncertainties that matter.
Not measure progress by activities completed
or operate another stage-gate process.
Build evidence that reduces the uncertainties that matter.
Not measure progress by activities completed or operate another stage-gate process.
What must we learn next and in what order?
Expose the critical uncertainties, turn them into testable hypotheses and determine which experiments will produce the most decision-relevant evidence.
03
VALUE & DECIDE
Make capital follow evidence.
Not fund the next stage simply because
the project reached it.
Make capital follow evidence.
Not fund the next stage simply because the project reached it.
What is the learning worth and what should we fund next?
Connect changing evidence to economic potential, strategic options and capital commitments—so investment increases only as consequential uncertainty is resolved.
Start with one strategically
important innovation opportunity.
A focused 10-week engagement applies the same three disciplines to a live project—working alongside your technical, commercial and leadership teams.
Frame &
Explore
What must become true — and where could solutions exist?
Architect &
Prioritise
What must we learn next — and in what order?
Value &
Decide
What is the learning worth — and what should we fund next?
What could work? → What must we learn? → What should we invest?
Built from doing innovation,
not just advising on it.
Krish Naganathan works with leadership, technical and commercial teams on difficult innovation decisions—drawing on more than three decades across industry, consulting, venture building and teaching.
30+ YEARS
Industry + consulting
OPERATOR → CEO → ADVISOR
Strategy grounded in execution
DEEPTECH + ENTERPRISE
Ventures to established organisations
AUTHOR + FACULTY
Innovation GPS · Nine Stages of Innovation · Innovation Rent Ladder · Institute of Venture Building
I am most useful when the answer is not obvious, the evidence is incomplete and the next decision matters.
Let’s work on
something real.
Bring one strategically important innovation opportunity. We can start by understanding the decision, the uncertainty and what needs to become true.