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In this episode, Marks & Clerk’s Anis Naidu is joined by Dr. Uday Phadke and Sam Dods, co-founders of Triple Chasm. Drawing on research across 7,000 companies globally, Uday and Sam have built a rigorous, data-driven framework for understanding why so many technology ventures fail to make the journey from laboratory to commercial success – and what the successful ten per cent consistently do differently.
The Triple Chasm model identifies three distinct points of failure on the commercialisation journey: validating a prototype, building a viable business model, and achieving true scale. Of these, the second chasm is where most ventures struggle – on average, it takes 6.7 attempts to find a business model that works. The episode explores what separates those who get through from those who do not, and the answer has less to do with the quality of the technology than you might think.
The most consistent predictor of success, confirmed by three decades of data, is whether a team invested serious effort in understanding their market before building their product. Uday and Sam are clear on the distinction: mapping the full value chain, identifying where genuine pull exists, and understanding who the actual customers are and how to reach them. Those who build first and look for markets afterwards fail at a predictable rate.
On IP, the episode challenges the instinct to treat patents as the whole story. The Triple Chasm framework positions IP as one of twelve interdependent commercialisation vectors, and argues that an IP strategy divorced from product definition, manufacturing, regulatory pathway, and go-to-market will always underperform. What counts as valuable IP also shifts across the three chasms: fundamental protection matters most early on, but by the time a company is scaling, portfolio management, process IP, and knowhow often carry greater weight. In digital health and AI, where foundational patents are typically owned by technology giants, the conversation shifts to process rights, copyright, and metadata ownership entirely.
For founders, investors, and innovation professionals looking for a more structured lens through which to evaluate commercialisation decisions, this episode offers a compelling and evidence-based perspective.
