Commercial success on the deep tech journey depends on accelerating the maturity of science and tech. It also involves innovating in areas outside the “driving IP differentiator”, creating the value to make it accessible by users in that domain and scalable for operational business. However, I think it has to be always fuelled by market opportunities. Given this, I feel strongly about merging: ### **Tech-led innovation:** Sometimes, this is perceived as superfluous/ for the sake of something being the cool, shiny next thing. This leads to capability developments (algorithm libraries, compute configurations, orchestrators, compilers, etc.) that are made accessible to users to drive what I term as **“platform-led” growth**: the extent of adoption and scale of usage are highly coupled to the level of user maturity to find utility themselves. ### **Problem-led innovation:**  where the needs/pains/blockers are clear, the linchpin breakthroughs needed can be defined, and a low-entropy market segment exists or can be created — this leads to **“solution-led” growth**: where application-specific tools/products are created incorporating the wider business context of the user and delivering the value to them post creating it. Truly creating value is the hardest part, which depends on scarce deep tech talent (scientists & domain experts) working closely with engineers/developers to make the value accessible. > _Given this,_ **_having a thesis_** _on where this merge between tech-led and problem-led innovation might exist is imperative to making bets and benefiting from tailwinds of other directional arrows of progress._ _I strongly believe in having a genuine sense of mission, which led to_ [_Quantum X_](https://medium.com/@karanmjpinto/introducing-quantum-x-5fb24ad5f0e1) _→ A collection of thesis laying out the vision for the future powered by quantum technologies that make it worthy of trading decades of one’s life to will into existence. Implementing this is not easy; to help, I’ve highlighted my key_ [[Operating Principles]]. ### Where could the value-driving platform-led and solution-led growth be found conceptually? 1. **Improve performance of worthy existing applications:** Optimising existing processes through hybrid and physics-inspired methodologies presents immediate opportunities for efficiency gains. 2. **Explore the potential of the desired unsolved:** Addressing challenges beyond the capabilities of current technologies unlocks potential intractable problems ripe for disruption. 3. **Frontier to the new and currently impossible:** Embracing novel de-novo opportunities offers a frontier yet to be fully explored and presents vast potential yet to be conceptualized. ## How to make this growth happen? ### 1. Find [**pattern-breaking ideas**](https://themariojude.com/Pattern+breaking+ideas) **through** [**domain-specific sensemaking**](https://themariojude.com/domain+specific+sense-making)**:**  I strongly encourage one to deeply understand the industry/application space where they try to innovate, irrespective of the technology used. Overlooking this and hoping for success is wishful thinking. Doing this well creates the right conditions to win. As I’ve shared, great companies are not born from following best practices or doing everything “right” by following processes. > Inflection events, non-obvious insights and living in the future create outliers that make pattern-breaking ideas happen. ### 2. Be customer-obsessed and listen to market feedback:  In the steelmaking section of my medium article, I highlight opportunities powered by [Deep Tech](https://jelvix.com/blog/what-is-deep-tech), which does not limit one to only Quantum Tech-enabled opportunities. Through the years, I’ve learnt that customers care most about creating a good business case that gets the basics right: **_meaningful value, reasonable timelines, and usable results._** This is irrespective of whether that value is created by AI, physics-inspired, or hybrid quantum tech methods. Often, the individual ecosystems get caught up in their “deep tech” bubbles, over-indexing on never-ending benchmarking battles. Although these are needed to accelerate the technology learning curves given the [[Productivity Paradox]], they do not translate well to what truly matters to the target customer in said niche market. This could be attributed to deep tech being a science-heavy community, where balancing being contrarian, right and practical is challenging. ### 3. Bet on what’s stable in time and look where no one is looking: I look for the obvious and the overlooked when finding opportunities. This involves asking what sucks, what’s strategically important, what’s highly valuable and what’s complex. Usually, I’ve found that spaces where unlocking value is coupled with taming complexity, are good exploration start points. > I’m constantly trying to understand what is “[[Here to Stay]]” and [[Focus and No Change]], to find evergreen opportunities that don’t fade away. ### 4. Be wary of corporate tax. Many new companies are plagued with a “corporate” tax they usually call upon themselves to pay. This is in the form of publicly perceived veterans who have spent many years in larger, well-established organizations, bringing their ways of working. These ways, such as hierarchical decision-making, longer timelines, larger budgets, and external agency outsourcing, may be successful at larger companies. They break down in the startup / scale-up world, given the high ambiguity, [[uncertainty]] and need for speed. This often leads to capital allocation on the _unnecessary_ at crucial points in the business. This should be kept in check to ensure that the needs on the critical path to scale are met. Related: [[Execution x Evolution x Disruption]] | [[Team Growth x Product Market Fit]] | [[Venture Building Manifesto]] | [[Order for Chaos]] | Read about [Quantum X](https://karanmjpinto.medium.com/introducing-quantum-x-5fb24ad5f0e1)