Critical Path Layers for Corporate Innovation

Layer -1

Innovation Intent

Is the organisation structurally set up to innovate, or is this theatre?

Strategic Rationale

Executive Commitment

Organisational Absorption Capacity

Innovation Governance

↓ Ordered: rationale → commitment → capacity → governance

Gate

Gate -1 → 0

Named business pressure with empirical evidence
Executive sponsor identified with budget authority and political capital
Organisational pathway from pilot to procurement exists
Innovation decision governance defined and communicated
Prior innovation attempts and failure modes documented

Layer 0

Problem Legitimacy

Is the innovation brief anchored in operational reality?

Problem Specificity

Solution Landscape

Mandate Clarity

Activators

Ownership Bottleneck ⟳

⟳ Ownership Bottleneck: surfaces here first, recurs at every layer · Activators: external forces making this problem urgent

Gate

Gate 0 → 1

Problem stated in operational language, not innovation jargon
Empirical evidence the problem exists at scale
Prior attempts and failure modes documented
Named owner with authority and incentive
Success defined in measurable terms
Activators identified (regulatory, competitive, market shifts)

Layer 1

Internal Market Clarity

The Adopter–Value Prop–Adoption Cost triangle

Internal Go-to-Market

Internal Value Proposition

Adoption Cost

Value Type Alignment

△ Triangle: adopter, value prop, and adoption cost resolve together · Value type alignment: does the articulated value match the adopter's decision logic?

Gate

Gate 1 → 2

Adopter specific enough to name person and team
Value prop in one sentence the adopter would repeat
Value type matches adopter's decision logic (financial, operational, strategic, positional, or human)
Adoption cost estimated honestly
Adopter confirmed willingness to invest effort

Layer 2

Organisational Feasibility

Prove it works inside your own systems

Stakeholder Architecture

Technical Integration

Pilot Design

Institutional Stickiness

↓ Ordered: stakeholder intel → tech feasibility → pilot execution · Institutional stickiness: integration that creates dependency and compounds value

Gate

Gate 2 → 3

Pilot completed with adopter-defined success criteria
Results packaged for champion's upward argument
Tech integration proven for pilot scope
Pilot-to-deployment path mapped with named owners
Blockers identified and mitigated
Emergent defensibility articulated (data generated, workflows adapted, users trained)

Layer 3

Scaling Mechanisms

Make adoption repeatable — only after validation

Adoption Playbook

Internal Visibility

Cross-functional Alignment

Gate

Gate 3 → 4

Documented, tested adoption playbook
At least one additional business unit adopted
Communication tied to operational evidence, not innovation narrative
Cross-functional dependencies mapped and agreed
Economics validated beyond pilot conditions

Layer 4

Institutional Embedding

Systematise what works, not what you hope will work

Process Integration

Governance & Continuity

Knowledge Transfer

Measurement

Cross-Cutting Dynamics

Ownership Bottleneck

Mandate clarity Pilot accountability Operational handover

Recursive — different manifestation at each layer

Executive Sponsorship

Originates at Layer -1 Most decisive

Originates at Innovation Intent, pervasive throughout, peaks at Organisational Feasibility

Strategic Alignment

Foundation Recurrent decisions Activator shifts

Foundational at Layer -1, strategic context shifts and activator changes force recurrence