Market Core · Market Opportunities · Module
Growth and direction
Where the demand is heading and what is driving it — because a shrinking large market and a growing small one call for opposite decisions.
The idea
How it works
A growth rate without a driver behind it is an extrapolation. What is causing the demand to grow determines whether it continues, and it is usually one or two identifiable things rather than a general condition.
Lifecycle stage changes what a market is worth. An emerging market rewards presence and tolerates inefficiency; a mature one rewards cost and punishes late entry, and the same size figure means different things in each.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Name the driver, not just the rate
Regulation, technology, demographics, price decline. A growth figure with no named cause cannot be forecast.
- 02
Establish the lifecycle stage
Emerging, growing, mature or declining. It determines what a good strategy in this market even looks like.
- 03
Separate cycle from trend
Several years of growth may be a recovery. Look back far enough to see the previous downturn.
- 04
Ask what would reverse it
A driver that could stop is a risk with a name, which is more useful than a confidence interval.
One level in
The components of growth and direction
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
A growth rate with no named driver is an extrapolation. Name what is causing it or do not forecast from it.
The other modules in market opportunities
Sizing
How large the opportunity actually is, built from the bottom up and stated as what is reachable rather than what exists.
LearnOpportunity assessment
Attractiveness and fit, judged separately — because a large growing market the organisation has no right to win is not an opportunity for it.
LearnThe shortlist
What the organisation has decided to pursue and what it has decided not to — both dated, because both will be revisited by someone who was not there.
Learn