Leader Spotlight: Navigating ambiguity to develop innovative products from scratch, with Sid Inamdar

Sid Inamdar is the Head of Product, UX & Strategy, Software Labs at Keysight Technologies. Sid earned a Master’s of Engineering degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School. After spending more than seven years in Engineering and leadership at Xerox, Sid moved into sales with Agilent Technologies and has been in Product Management with Keysight Technologies for the last 10 years, where he leads innovative zero-to-one work.

In our conversation, Sid offers on-the-ground insight about what it takes to manage zero-to-one work amid growing pressure to execute. He notes the distinct qualities of people drawn to this creative work and discusses why a principled, but focused and unbiased mentality is central to securing stakeholder buy-in and making the tough calls.

---

The unique aspects of zero-to-one work

At Keysight Technologies, you’re responsible for all of the zero-to-one new product work. How is that distinct from what the rest of the product organization does?

In large companies with established product lines, zero-to-one groups resemble internal venture studios more closely than traditional product teams. They operate like startups inside the enterprise, with discovery taking priority over delivery.

Ash Maurya, who, in my opinion, is one of the best teachers and practitioners in this space, shaped how I think about innovation. One of his core principles is that your product isn’t the product - your business model is. That means teams think beyond the unmet needs and solutions to revenue paths, channels, partnerships, cost structures, pricing, go-to-market, and how it all aligns with company strategy. In zero-to-one work, it often takes what I’ll call business model engineers to tweak those knobs and levers until you reach the trinity of innovation: an offering that’s desirable, viable, and feasible.

Another nuance is that what you build for early adopters rarely satisfies the broader market or the core business. The real failure point is usually not in discovery, but in the handoff. Too many projects gain traction with early users but stall when they reconnect with the larger organization. That transition back into the core business must be intentional and designed from the beginning, not left as an afterthought.

What does the zero-to-one process entail, and what kind of mindset do you need to have throughout the process?

At the start, zero-to-one work is fueled by energy and optimism. Everything feels possible. Then you inevitably enter what’s often called the ‘messy middle’. It’s the phase where you encounter problem after problem. That’s not a bad thing. It means you’re uncovering issues now that would have tripped you up later. But it’s also the stage where frustration sets in, small challenges feel overwhelming, and people start to lose faith.

The key is recognizing when you’re in the messy middle and staying the course. One practice I recommend is keeping weekly notes because when you look back a few months later, you’ll see how far you’ve come. That perspective helps you push through the ambiguity and keep momentum alive.

Do you ever feel a tension between wanting to push boundaries and having to stay on the straight and narrow?

Very much so. People drawn to zero-to-one work naturally want to push the envelope. The challenge is knowing when to explore and when to anchor. With customers, that means setting clear expectations and choosing early collaborators who are willing to be co-learners with you. You’re solving a hard problem for them, and in return, you benefit from their insight and feedback. You also need the agility to pivot as new discoveries reshape the solution.

Internally, the tension shows up when ideas drift too far from the company’s strategy. Not every problem that can be solved should be solved by your company. If you lose sight of that, you risk misalignment. The way we manage it is by always bringing the conversation back to customer outcomes and our business model. That tension between exploration and practical grounding is actually healthy. Without it, you end up chasing novelty for its own sake and losing sight of both customer needs and company strategy.

Securing buy-in from stakeholders at every level

In a large company, how do you create the space for zero-to-one discovery work — both in making the case for unproven ideas and protecting the time to explore them under pressure to execute?

The biggest hurdle is where that work lives. If you ask mature business units to take on unproven bets, they’ll struggle - not because they lack the ability, but because their incentives are tied to protecting revenue and hitting near-term targets. The system simply isn’t designed for experimentation. That’s why zero-to-one efforts are best housed outside the business unit, with their own sponsorship, budget, and metrics. In that setup, the expectation is to validate ideas systematically and save the company money by not building products customers don’t want.

The second step is protecting the practice of discovery itself. We’ve all tried carving out a few hours for white space exploration inside core teams, but those hours disappear the moment the week’s fire drill hits. By contrast, a dedicated discovery function ensures that prototypes are built, customers are engaged, and real market signals are tested.

One of the strongest arguments for this model is financial: even with the right tools and methods, 80–90% of new products fail to meet their objectives. Most companies don’t have a systematic way to test new ideas, so they end up wasting millions on products that never gain traction. A protected discovery function flips that. It turns failure into learning and drastically reduces the risk of building products no one wants.

Building momentum and driving success

What does a well-functioning discovery team look like to you?

A great discovery team balances people and systems. The individuals drawn to this work share a relentless pursuit of truth. They’re very curious by nature, act as detectives, but are also disciplined about removing bias from the equation.

That discipline comes from process. People often assume process stifles creativity, but in reality the opposite is true as long as you’re not a prisoner to your process. A balanced process protects you from yourself. When someone’s passionate about an idea, it’s easy to find data that confirms what they want to believe. A good discovery process forces you to step back, test assumptions, and recognize that killing an idea can be just as much of a win as moving one forward.

The other ingredient is structure. Discovery teams should be cross-functional by design, with a product manager acting as a business model engineer, paired with user research, design, engineering, and a subject matter expert. That’s not always possible, but it makes it a lot easier to navigate a new space.

How do you build momentum for changes when you don’t have clear wins to point to?

The hard truth is that nobody cares about early-stage work until it shows results, usually in revenue or adoption. And in zero-to-one, you don’t have that for a while. The only currency you have is customer insight and traction, so you need to keep bringing those insights back to the organization and demonstrate how they’re shaping direction. That means keeping sponsors closely briefed and being transparent about the signals you’re seeing once you’ve passed the sniff tests around viability, feasibility, and desirability.

Beyond that, it’s about credibility. Zero-to-one is an ambiguous function, and trust buys you time. By sharing intermediate milestones, documenting learnings, and communicating progress along the way, you give the organization confidence that momentum is building before the big wins arrive.

Making the tough decisions

In your position, you manage both stakeholder expectations and your team. How do you manage the communication down the chain about directions that come from executives?

I’ve got a lot of battle scars here. I’ve lived through just about every pivot you can imagine. The deeper you are in development, the more painful it is to pull the rug out. That is the nature of zero to one. It is not neat and predictable. You’re constantly navigating changes in the market, the team, stakeholders, and the company’s strategy.

The hardest moments are when you have to kill something people have poured themselves into. You cannot spin it or sugarcoat it. But you can be honest, give people room to feel what is really a loss, and show them that killing an idea is not failure. It is part of the process. If you handle it with empathy and respect, the team usually comes back stronger and more resilient.

Do you ever kill an idea too early or follow a product in a promising direction and then kill it too late?

Honestly, it is usually the latter. It is easy to let something drift too long because you are hoping it might turn the corner. That is why you need clear metrics and timelines, so if you do not see progress by a certain point, you have permission to shut it down.

There are always judgment calls, though. If your sponsors see a spark and want to give it a little more runway, often you do. At the end of the day, it is a probability game. You want to let more high-quality ideas through, knowing you might still end up killing the one that could have been a breakout success. That is the risk baked into this kind of work.

Having managed these high-stakes decisions for a long time, have you developed a heuristic or process for making them?

I think people lean too hard on data, especially those new to this space. They want to be data-driven instead of data-informed. In zero-to-one, you are often lucky if you have any data at all. Early on, you just have to accept you will be wrong more often than you are right.

What helps me is going back to first principles. Whether it is the problem or the business model, I try to break it down to the atomic level, strip out assumptions, and then build it back up. That gives me a clearer view of what is really in the way.

I also make a point of stating assumptions out loud and debating them with the team. That usually leads to better decisions.

And finally, I ask if the decision is reversible or not. Maybe the market is not ready. Maybe the tech is immature. Maybe our customers are moving slower than we are. If it is reversible, we can pause and come back later. If it is truly irreversible, that is when I slow down. The truth is most decisions in this space are reversible, and realizing that makes them a lot less scary.

What does LogRocket do?

LogRocket’s Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.