Question: What new core competencies will we need to build to protect and extend out franchise in current markets?
The goal is to find out what competencies must be built to support and extend a company’s franchise in an existing market. Skills may have to be improved and if they are not readily available in house then they will have to be acquired.
There must be consistency around which core competencies have to be developed and this has to come from all senior managers. Stability to senior management teams and correspondingly to strategic agendas is extremely important for success. Cumulative learning over time is a key success factor in building core competencies.
Another question can be asked of this quadrant and this is:
What new competencies might replace or make obsolete the competencies that are currently used to satisfy the needs of existing customers?
A company must gain an understanding of any new competencies that may one day supersede its traditional skill base.
Question: What is the opportunity to improve our position in existing markets by better leveraging our existing core competencies?
By mapping which competencies support which end-product markets, the company can identify opportunities to strengthen its position in a particular market by importing competencies that may already exist elsewhere in the corporation.
Question: What new products or services could we create by creatively redeploying or recombining our current core competencies?
White spaces refer to opportunities that are not within the product-market arena of existing business units and the goal is to find opportunities to extend existing core competencies into new product-markets. To identify these white spaces, a company must start with core competencies rather than with a product-market analysis and then consider any potential opportunities for applying the particular customer benefit represented by a particular core competence.
Competencies rather than cash are the scarcest resources in creating new markets. The best competence resources should be allocated to the most promising new growth areas. For diversification there has to be strong core competency logic.
Question: What new core competencies would we need to build to participate in the most exciting markets of the future?
Opportunities falling in this quadrant are outside of the company’s existing competencies and also their existing product-markets. These opportunities will be followed and developed if they are seen to be especially significant or attractive.
The approach to strategy in this quadrant may be a series of small, targeted acquisitions or partnerships through which the company could gain access to and understand the competencies required while beginning to learn about their potential application.
Opportunities in this quadrant should be approached with utmost caution as the company has very little or no experience to inform any decision-making.