Entrepreneur · Author · Business Educator
Sahil Khanna
Sahil Khanna is an Indian entrepreneur, business educator, and creator known for Intellectual Indies and Lapaas. At Indies Education, he turns business research and operating experience into rigorous, practical lessons.
- 684
- Published lessons
- 1M+
- Primary-channel subscribers
- 2017
- Intellectual Indies founded
Background and practice
From engineering fundamentals to practical business education
Sahil’s published profiles describe a transition from chemical engineering into marketing and management. That combination—systems thinking from engineering and commercial judgment from business—continues to shape how he explains complex ideas.
He founded Intellectual Indies in 2017 and built it into a business-learning content ecosystem covering company case studies, startups, marketing, strategy, and candid founder conversations. He also founded Lapaas, a New Delhi digital-marketing and education business. Sahil describes his entrepreneurial journey as including the eventual exit from the agency he built.
Across workshops, courses, consulting, and digital media, Sahil’s work has reached students, startup founders, legacy-business owners, and operating teams. His primary Intellectual Indies channel has more than one million subscribers. Sahil’s public profiles describe a combined audience above two million across his content ecosystem, while Lapaas course pages report more than 140,000 entrepreneurs reached through its educational work.
At Indies Education, Sahil serves as author and lead educator. Every lesson is designed to go beyond definitions: readers should understand the mechanism, examine evidence and limits, apply a framework, and leave with an action plan and checklist.
Elsewhere
Profiles and source notes
Written by Sahil Khanna
Latest business lessons
Evidence-led chapters designed to move from understanding to action.
Conjoint Analysis: Design and Interpret Trade-Offs
A rigorous, practical guide to estimate how people trade product or service attributes by designing realistic choice tasks, modelling preferences, and translating results cautiously into decisions. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into.
Pareto Analysis: Find the Vital Few Responsibly
A rigorous, practical guide to identify the vital few contributors to a defined outcome while preserving denominators, severity, uncertainty, and the long tail. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.
Improve Solutions by Arguing Both Sides
Structured argument can improve a decision when teams build strong affirmative and negative cases from shared evidence. This chapter explains devil’s advocacy, dialectical inquiry, decision criteria, synthesis, psychological safety, and safeguards against performative debate.
The Problem Definition Process for Managers
The way a problem is defined determines which evidence, causes, stakeholders, and solutions become visible. This chapter offers a rigorous framing process, rival definitions, boundary tests, a worked case, measurement system, and decision-ready problem brief.
Soft Systems Methodology: Practical Guide
Soft Systems Methodology helps groups learn their way through messy situations where goals, boundaries, and success are contested. This chapter explains rich pictures, CATWOE, root definitions, purposeful activity models, comparison, accommodations, and ethically defensible change.
8D Problem Solving: A Rigorous Practitioner Guide
The 8D method organizes a cross-functional response to serious recurring defects. This chapter explains each discipline, containment, root-cause and escape-point verification, corrective-action testing, prevention, governance, measurement, and the difference between a closed report and a solved problem.
The Simplex Process: Robust Creative Problem Solving
The Simplex process connects problem finding to implementation through eight iterative stages. This chapter explains divergent and convergent thinking, problem ownership, fact finding, challenge framing, ideation, evaluation, acceptance, action, measurement, facilitation, and the limits of treating innovation as a workshop.
The Four-Step Innovation Process: Practical Guide
The Weiss–Legrand four-step innovation process links business context to problem definition, idea generation, and implementation. This chapter explains the model, evidence, decision criteria, experimentation, governance, failure modes, and how to keep a simple framework from becoming a linear ritual.
Creative Problem Solving: From Insight to Action
Creative problem solving moves beyond brainstorming by separating divergent and convergent thinking across clarification, ideation, development, and implementation. This chapter covers the modern CPS model, facilitation, fixation, option development, testing, inclusion, evidence, and the operating practices that turn novelty into responsible value.
Causal Factor Charting: A Practical Guide
A rigorous, practical guide to reconstruct a defensible event sequence, distinguish conditions from actions, test causal claims, and design corrective actions that address the system rather than the nearest person. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need.
Root Cause Analysis: A Systems-Based Guide
A rigorous, practical guide to investigate recurring or consequential problems through evidence, systems thinking, causal testing, corrective action, and verification. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.
The 5 Whys: Find Root Causes Without Blame
A rigorous, practical guide to use iterative why questions quickly while avoiding linear stories, blame, unsupported depth, and false confidence. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.