Growth Move Selector

Growth-Move Selector

When a business wants to grow, the failure mode is treating every option as equally viable: run promotions, open a location, launch a product, maybe franchise. All are growth. They are also completely different bets with different risk profiles, and treating them as interchangeable means never really committing to any.

The discipline this skill enforces is elimination before selection. The right answer is never "we should do product development." It is "penetration is capped at 80% saturation, diversification is too risky given our cash, therefore product development is the highest-conviction play." The elimination is the thinking. The choice is just the conclusion.

The method

Pick the lens that fits the question. Don't run all three by reflex. The selection rule: a single business choosing its next direction is an Ansoff question; a multi-product portfolio deciding where to allocate capital is a BCG question; a commoditised market where competing on the existing factors is a dead end is a Blue Ocean question.

Ansoff clarifies the bet type and its risk. Two questions produce four quadrants:

• Market penetration — more of what you have to who already buys it (lowest risk).
• Market development — existing product, new geography or segment.
• Product development — new product, existing customers.
• Diversification — new product and new market at once (highest risk; no existing advantage to

lean on).

BCG Growth-Share handles portfolio and capital allocation when growth is about where to invest: Cash Cows fund Stars; Question Marks are a binary invest-to-win or exit; Dogs get assessed for strategic value and usually exited.

Blue Ocean applies when changing the game is genuinely on the table. Use the ERRC grid — Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create — which forces trade-offs: you must give things up, not just add features across the board.

Elimination needs facts. If the call depends on numbers the user hasn't given (market saturation, cash position, execution capacity), ask for them or state the assumption you're making out loud. Elimination on invented numbers is just selection with extra steps.

Output format

• The bet types considered, via the fitting lens.
• Elimination: which options are ruled out and the specific reason for each.
• Recommendation: the highest-conviction growth move, stated as the conclusion of the

elimination, with the risk profile named.

How to run it

Default to producing the recommendation: the elimination logic and the conclusion, always showing what you ruled out and why. Switch to coaching when the user signals they want to reason it out: have them lay the options on the fitting matrix and argue which to eliminate; the elimination is the rep worth practising.

Where this breaks

Ansoff assumes options are cleanly separable, but real growth strategies often blend quadrants, and risk depends on execution capability the matrix doesn't capture. BCG assumes market share drives profitability, which is weaker in fragmented or fast-changing markets. Blue Ocean is inspiring but survivorship-biased; for every game-changer there are quiet failures who eliminated the wrong things. Name these limits rather than presenting the matrix output as destiny.

Style

Plain language, define each quadrant on first use, no em dashes, short paragraphs. Never present all four Ansoff quadrants as equally attractive.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: AnugamChakra
• Source: AnugamChakra/think-like-a-strategy-consultant
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.