Critical Path Layers: A Dependency Map for Innovation

TLDR;-) Most innovation frameworks organise by domain. The problem is that domain-based thinking hides the only question that actually matters in early-stage work: what needs to be true before this can work?
Critical Path Layers reorders the familiar themes of startup growth and corporate innovation into a dependency sequence. Each layer gates the next. It doesn't tell you what to do. It tells you what to solve first.

Every coaching and advisory framework I've encountered makes the same structural error. Strategy in one column, operations in another, fundraising somewhere else. Neat. Logical. And almost entirely unhelpful for sequencing decisions.

Domain-based organisation tells you what to think about. It says nothing about when. And in early-stage work, when is everything.

Critical Path Layers takes the same familiar themes and reorders them into a dependency sequence. Each layer gates the next. You can work on anything you like at any time, of course. But effort spent on downstream themes before upstream prerequisites are resolved is the single most common pattern of wasted founder and corporate innovator effort. I see it constantly. Strategy before problem clarity. Pricing architecture before product-market fit. Hiring plans before unit economics.

The framework doesn't prescribe. It sequences.

How the gates work

Between each layer sits a gate: a set of conditions that need to be credibly met before the next layer becomes productive territory.

"Credibly" is doing real work in that sentence. A gate isn't a checkbox exercise. It's an honest assessment of whether the foundations beneath your current focus can bear weight.

For startups, Gate 0→1 asks whether you can articulate the problem in buyer language, whether there's basic problem-solution fit, and whether your strategic thesis is testable. Until those things are true, working on go-to-market or pricing architecture is premature. Not wrong in principle. Unproductive in practice.

For corporate innovators, the sequence starts a layer earlier. Layer -1 asks a question most innovation programmes skip entirely: is this organisation structurally set up to absorb what we're about to create? No named executive sponsor with budget authority? No pathway from pilot to procurement? Everything downstream becomes innovation theatre.

That's a distinction worth making explicit. Startups fail because they build before they've validated. Corporate innovation fails because the organisation was never configured to receive what was built. Different failure mode. Different starting layer.

Cross-cutting themes

Some themes refuse to sit neatly in one layer. Founder bottleneck (in the startup edition) and ownership bottleneck (in the corporate edition) are recursive. They surface early and return in different form at every stage. Strategy is foundational but also recurrent: context shifts, and what was true at Layer 0 may need revisiting at Layer 3.

The maps make these dynamics visible rather than leaving them as background noise.

Two editions

I've built two interactive versions of the framework, each tailored to a different context:

→ Critical Path Layers — Startups & Scaleup Innovation
→ Critical Path Layers — Corporate Innovation

Both are thinking tools. They work best as a diagnostic starting point: where are you actually, and where are you spending energy relative to where the real constraint sits?

If you're a founder, a corporate innovation lead, or someone coaching either — explore the maps. They tend to surface uncomfortable but useful truths about sequencing.