The method
Every market move turns on the same six questions — a new market, a new product into one you know, or a push for more share where you already are. Five of them carry the decision; the last one runs after launch and checks the answers held. What your move does is decide which of them you actually have to answer — and where the money gets committed.
The route, at full depth
Drawn on the hardest move — a new product into a new market — so every question is open and every commitment is present. Nothing sits between the first three: analysis is cheap there, so gating it would gate nothing. Cost decides where a commitment goes; sequence never does.
- 1
- 2
Is the market worth it?
The market
Answered by Market Size Calculator · Value Chain Mapping · Regulatory Risk Analyzer
- 3
Can we win it?
The edge
Answered by Competitive Pressure · Value Proposition Builder · Economic Value Calculator · Qualification & Switching · Growth Plan Developer
Fund developmenta commitment
Fund development of a new product?
Spends: R&D budget, lab slots, and the team that could be doing something else
- 4
Can we make it?
The build
Answered byDevelopmentNew productProduction readinessNew productCapacityInvestment case
Commit capacitya commitment
Build or book it?
Spends: capacity, and capex if it isn't already there
- 5
Launcha commitment
Go — this way, at this price?
Spends: launch budget, targets, and the entry option itself
- 6
Is it working?
The proof
Answered byActual sales vs planKPI trackingMarket trackingReview cadenceScale/fix/exit triggersAssumptions retired
Reviewa check
Scale, fix, or exit?
Spends: continued funding
Four moves, four routes
The numbering never changes. What changes is which questions stay at full depth, which lighten, and which collapse — and a collapsed question is never deleted. It stays openable, and the router writes down what collapsing it assumed, as a claim you can reopen.
Market entry
Market development
New product, market you know
Product development
New product, new market
Diversification
More of where you already are
Penetration
Filled = full depth · outline = lightened or reshaped by the move · dashed = collapsed, never deleted. Hover any stop for the router’s own note on what it did and why.
Seeing it work
Two things the description above can assert but not show: what your move does to the route, and what you are left holding once a tool is finished with a question.
Pick a move, and watch the route change
Two questions — what are you taking, and where — decide which of the questions you actually have to answer, and where the money gets committed. Every figure below is deriveRoute()’s real output.
market
market
collapsed
3 Win it? — A proven product in an unfamiliar market — the edge has to be re-argued against local alternatives, not assumed.
4 Make it? — Existing product — this collapses to two checks: does capacity cover the ramp, and what does qualification take.
⚠ Recorded as an assumption: Accessible capacity covers the year-3 ramp.
⚠ Recorded as an assumption: The product enters this market as it is — no development work is required to serve it.
What a tool leaves behind
Every tool ends the same way — a rating on the one factor it is qualified to judge, how far the work behind it has got, and the evidence logged along the way. That is what the map reads.
Open any tool and it lands on a factor — the one thing that tool is qualified to judge. There are ten of them across the six questions, and nine plot where you land on the map.
A rating, on a scale that means something
Not a number you invent. Each of the five steps is written out — what a 4 looks like, what a 10 looks like — so the level is a sentence you picked, and anyone can see which sentence you disagreed with.
And how far the work behind it has actually got
The same 10 means two different things on the first afternoon and after three customer calls. So a rating carries its own confidence — at the bottom of the ladder the tool says it plainly: “this rating is a first guess, not a finding”. It still counts in full either way; nothing is quietly discounted behind your back.
And any one of them can be the deal-breaker
Flag a factor as a knockout and a low rating caps the whole recommendation at No-Go, however good everything else looks — the trap in every scored 2×2, where a big enough market outvotes the thing that actually kills it.
Clear need
Real unmet need evidenced by customer input; a credible reason to switch exists.
Elevated
Significant regulatory uncertainty, long approval timelines, or possible restriction of something the offer depends on.
Higher is always better — on a risk factor (regulatory, substitution, competition) a high level means low risk.
An illustration — the component is the one the app renders on every question page.