Metropolitan governments in South Asia are facing difficult challenges in meeting citizens' demands for better services. Innovations are being attempted to effectively counter the challenges faced and to prepare to move forward into an uncertain future. Innovations have been more successfully implemented and institutionalized in some Indian cities, but slow to come in two Pakistani cities. The experience of Colombo in Sri Lanka has been encouraging from the perspective of innovation initiation and institutionalization. Dhaka's experience in Bangladesh provides a mixed picture as small innovations are initiated from time to time but these have not been institutionalized. The variables critical for the successful introduction and sustenance of innovations in metropolitan governance are: active citizen involvement, dissemination of relevant information to citizens, regular monitoring of the progress of innovations through client participation, transparency in the decision-making process and accountability of the officials concerned to the consumers of service.