The Open Innovation Stack asks what would change if the institutions around a startup could use common workflows, portable records, open standards, and privacy-preserving learning instead of rebuilding the same disconnected systems.
[!IMPORTANT] This repository is currently a public foundation and design proposal. It contains research, concept documents, an early product requirements document, publishing work, and the beginnings of an open standard. It does not yet contain a complete, production-ready Open Innovation Stack, a released conformance suite, or an operating certification program.
Project site · Vision · Roadmap · Architecture · Contribute
Founding maintainers
The Open Innovation Stack vision was developed jointly by Jeremy Fritzhand (@fritzhand) and Krish Chittmalla (@krshh). Both serve as founding maintainers and steward the repository together.
Start here
- The public vision states the outcomes and constraints this repository will use to evaluate future work.
- The architecture overview separates the proposed open standard from the proposed reference implementation.
- The roadmap separates work under way from later hypotheses.
- The standards workspace explains how an implementation-independent Innovation Hub Data Standard could be developed.
- The governance model makes current maintainer authority and future transition conditions explicit.
The idea
Innovation support is rich in programs and people but poor in interoperability. Founders repeatedly enter the same information. Operators reconstruct applications, mentoring, milestones, compliance, and reporting in spreadsheets and inboxes. Facilities and expertise are difficult to discover. Lessons stay inside individual institutions.
The proposal is to develop shared rails:
- Operating workflows that an incubator or innovation program can adapt without starting from zero.
- Portable, permissioned records that founders can reuse across participating destinations.
- An open data standard that independent implementations can exchange and validate.
- Discovery and routing for programs, capital, mentors, researchers, and facilities.
- Privacy-preserving learning loops that return useful aggregate signals without turning participant data into a surveillance product.
The economic figures discussed in the source material, including the ₹25,000-crore opportunity, are scenarios based on stated assumptions—not observed outcomes or forecasts.
Proposed modules
Current product scoping explores seven connected modules. These are design directions, not seven finished products in this repository.
| Module | Proposed role |
|---|---|
| Incubator OS | Applications, evaluation, member support, milestones, compliance, and reporting |
| Founder Identity + DealFlow | A founder-controlled vault and reusable application workflow |
| Ecosystem Map | Searchable institutions, researchers, technologies, programs, and schemes |
| Facility Booking | Discovery, request, approval, and later cross-facility routing |
| Institute Intelligence | Institution-level operational and outcome dashboards |
| Federated Intelligence | Governed aggregate benchmarks, signals, and policy analysis |
| Mentorship & Coaching | Structured session artefacts, action items, follow-up, and outcome learning |
The intended standard remains separate from the reference implementation so other open or commercial systems could conform without adopting the entire application.
What exists today
| Area | Current repository status |
|---|---|
| Concept and problem framing | Present; open for critique |
| Product requirements | Public architecture brief available; detailed requirements remain under review |
| Public vision, roadmap, and governance | Foundation documents |
| Article and infographic publishing | Curated sources and a local build are available; public deployment is pending |
| Innovation Hub Data Standard | Scope only; schemas and conformance tests are not yet released |
| Integrated reference implementation | Not yet published in this repository |
| Production deployment from this repository | Not available |
| Certification mark or certified deployments | Not available |
| Multi-stakeholder or independent steward | A future governance aspiration, not the current state |
Local source drafts used to prepare these public documents describe operating experience and prototypes developed outside this repository. Those references inform the proposal; they should not be read as evidence that the integrated public stack already exists here. The raw drafts are intentionally excluded from the published repository.
Articles and visual explainers
The article that introduces this framing is “The Open Innovation Stack: What If India's Innovation Ecosystem Could Learn Together?” Read the curated repository edition. The publication series is also available through Jeremy Fritzhand's LinkedIn articles index.
Two adjacent articles connect the ecosystem idea to company-level practice and to local ecosystem design:
- “Scattered company files become one structured knowledge base, and the work comes out of it.”
- “Healthy Startup Ecosystems Are Built in Loops, Not Layers”
Curated infographics are published through the visual-explainers gallery. Their manifest, provenance, release process, and review status are available in the repository. Raw exports and social-platform captures are intentionally not part of the public source tree.
Repository tour
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
README.md | Project status, entry points, principles, and related work |
VISION.md | Public outcomes, commitments, and non-goals |
ROADMAP.md | Evidence-gated path from foundation to implementation |
GOVERNANCE.md | Current authority, decision process, and evolution |
standards/ | Workspace for the proposed open data standard |
docs/ | Architecture and project documentation |
content/ | Curated, publishable articles and visual metadata as they are added |
web/ | Dependency-free static publishing engine, tests, and site assets |
.github/ | Contribution, issue, review, and automation configuration |
Build the public site
The publishing layer uses Node 22 and no third-party runtime or build dependencies. The repository's Markdown and infographic manifest remain the source of truth; generated files go to the ignored _site/ directory.
npm test # publishing helpers, production build, and repository links
npm run check # syntax, content contracts, assets, and generated local links
npm run build # write the production site to _site/
npm run dev # build and preview at http://127.0.0.1:4173/The included GitHub Actions workflow runs the tests and build for branches and pull requests. On main, it uploads _site/ through the official GitHub Pages artifact flow. A repository administrator must enable Settings → Pages → Source → GitHub Actions once before the first deployment.
Principles
- Interoperability over lock-in. The standard should outlive any one implementation or service provider.
- Participant control. Founder-owned and institution-owned records remain permissioned by their owners.
- Minimum necessary data. Collect and retain only what a workflow or governed analysis requires.
- Human-confirmed claims. AI may assist extraction or suggest relationships; it must not silently convert uncertainty into fact or causation.
- Modular adoption. Participants should be able to begin with a useful workflow instead of accepting an all-or-nothing national platform.
- Open floor, services above it. Core code and standards can remain open while implementation, hosting, training, and custom integration support a sustainable services market.
- Adoption earns legitimacy. Public-infrastructure recognition, governance authority, and certification must follow working evidence and stakeholder participation.
Roadmap
The immediate focus is repository and standards foundation work: making the proposal inspectable, establishing licensing and contribution rules, defining the minimum data-standard surface, and identifying a narrow reference implementation slice. The broader modules, government integrations, federated learning, certification, and national network remain later hypotheses with explicit readiness gates.
See ROADMAP.md for current work, proposed stages, and exit criteria.
Related work
| Project | Why it is relevant | Repository | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Startup Stack | Company-level, AI-readable operating knowledge and a reference for repository-first publishing | GitHub | Live site |
| AI Dev | A project-first method for building and understanding software with AI | GitHub | Live site |
| Startup India Guide | A structured public guide to India's startup ecosystem | GitHub | Live site |
| Standard SaaS Starter | Inspiration for repository hygiene, testing, and application-shell patterns; not an OIS dependency | GitHub | — |
Contributing
This is the useful moment to challenge assumptions. Contributions are welcome on the problem framing, workflows, data-standard boundaries, privacy model, accessibility, evidence, governance, publishing system, and eventually the reference implementation.
Read CONTRIBUTING.md, the governance model, and the Code of Conduct before opening a pull request. Security and accidental data-exposure reports belong in the private process described in SECURITY.md.
Licensing
- Software, scripts, configuration, reference schemas, and test code are licensed under the MIT License.
- Original documentation, specification prose, articles, diagrams, and infographics are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, unless a file says otherwise.
- Third-party material and source attachments are not relicensed merely by being present locally.
See LICENSE-CONTENT.md for attribution guidance and the boundary between code and content.
Citation
If this work informs research, policy, a deployment, or another standard, please cite the repository and the exact version or commit used. Machine-readable citation metadata is available in CITATION.cff.