The method
Every market move turns on the same three questions — a new market, a new product into one you know, or a push for more share where you already are. The three build the evidence; then you decide. What your move does is decide how deep each question goes.
The route, at full depth
Drawn on the hardest move — a new product into a new market — so every question is open. Nothing sits between the three questions, and nothing sits between the third and the decision: analysis is cheap and so is deciding, so gating either would gate nothing.
- 1
- 2
Is the market worth it?
The market
Answered by Market Model · Segment Map · Value Chain · Regulatory Review
- 3
Can we win it?
The edge
Answered by Competitive Landscape · Value Proposition · Price Case · Qualification Path · Growth Plan
Four moves, four routes
The three questions never change. What changes is how deep each goes, and which of them the move reshapes. A lightened question is never deleted — it stays openable, and the router writes down what lightening 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 how deep each question goes. Every figure below is deriveRoute()’s real output.
market
market
3 Win it? — A proven product in an unfamiliar market — the edge has to be re-argued against local alternatives, not assumed.
After the decision — Existing product — this collapses to two checks: does capacity cover the ramp, and what does qualification take.
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 across the three questions, and every one of them plots where you land on the map. An eleventh — how well the product fits what you would have to build — belongs to the build, after the decision.
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.
An illustration — the component is the one the app renders on every project.