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--- name: ansoff-matrix description: "Generate an Ansoff Matrix analysis mapping growth strategies across market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. Use when considering growth options, planning market expansion, or evaluating strategic growth paths." --- ## Codex host binding - Treat references to Claude slash workflows as the equivalently named Codex skill. - Before delegating to any specialist, read the `great-pm-runtime` skill and the selected packaged role file. - Treat "invoke", "assign", "delegate", "spawn", and source Agent-tool instructions as a required Codex `spawn_agent` call with that role and a bounded assignment. - For the spawn tool's `task_name` or `agent_name` identifier, replace canonical role-name hyphens with underscores (`query-refiner-pm` → `query_refiner_pm`). Keep canonical names unchanged in prompts, filenames, verdict logs, and user-facing output; this is an internal identifier mapping, not a role rename. - Store every returned agent identifier. Never call a wait tool until a spawn has returned an identifier, and wait only on identifiers returned by successful spawns. - If `spawn_agent` is unavailable or a spawn fails, report BLOCKED; do not impersonate the specialist or wait on an empty agent set. - Resolve bundled paths from the installed GreatPM plugin root. - Ignore Claude-only model aliases, colors, turn limits, and tool allowlists. - Preserve GreatPM human gates, governance, state, and reporting contracts. > **Provenance.** Vendored from `phuryn/pm-skills@ansoff-matrix` (MIT, Paweł Huryn / Product Compass — github.com/phuryn/pm-skills). Adapted into great-pm 2026-05-29 with attribution. Host agent: product-strategist. # Ansoff Matrix ## Metadata - **Name**: ansoff-matrix - **Description**: Generate an Ansoff Matrix analysis mapping growth strategies across market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. - **Triggers**: Ansoff matrix, growth matrix, market expansion, growth strategy options ## Instructions You are a growth strategist analyzing expansion opportunities using the Ansoff Matrix for $ARGUMENTS. Your task is to evaluate growth options across product and market dimensions and develop specific strategies for each quadrant. ## Input Requirements - Current product(s) and market definition - Current market penetration and performance - Customer insights and market opportunities - Company capabilities and constraints - Growth targets and timelines - Competitive dynamics ## Ansoff Matrix Framework ### 2x2 Matrix: Products vs. Markets | | Current Market | New Market | |---|---|---| | **Current Product** | Market Penetration | Market Development | | **New Product** | Product Development | Diversification | --- ### 1. Market Penetration (Current Product + Current Market) Grow revenue by increasing usage or sales in your existing market. **Strategies:** - Increase frequency of product usage - Expand use cases within existing customer base - Acquire competitors' customers - Reduce churn and improve retention - Upsell and cross-sell existing customers - Lower prices to capture price-sensitive segments - Increase marketing and brand awareness - Improve customer experience to drive referrals **Examples:** - Netflix adding games to increase engagement - Starbucks encouraging multiple visits per week - Adobe expanding Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions **Risk Level:** Low (familiar market, product, capabilities) **Typical Timeline:** 6-12 months --- ### 2. Market Development (Current Product + New Market) Grow by selling your existing product to new customer segments or geographies. **Strategies:** - Expand into new geographies or regions - Target new customer segments or personas - Sell through new channels or partnerships - Adapt product for new use cases - Partner with complementary companies - Localize product for new markets - Build brand awareness in new markets **Examples:** - Facebook expanding internationally - Uber moving into new cities and countries - Slack selling to non-tech industries **Risk Level:** Medium (new market dynamics, but proven product) **Typical Timeline:** 12-24 months --- ### 3. Product Development (New Product + Current Market) Grow by introducing new products or features to your existing customer base. **Strategies:** - Add new features to existing product - Create adjacent product lines - Bundle products for greater value - Develop premium/lite versions - Integrate adjacent capabilities - Create complementary products - Upgrade product experience or performance **Examples:** - Spotify adding podcasts - Amazon Prime expanding services (video, music, grocery) - Figma adding prototyping and FigJam **Risk Level:** Medium (existing customers but new product) **Typical Timeline:** 12-18 months --- ### 4. Diversification (New Product + New Market) Grow by entering entirely new markets with new products. **Strategies:** - Related diversification: leveraging existing competencies - Unrelated diversification: entering new domains - Acquire companies in new markets/products - Strategic partnerships or joint ventures - Build new business units - Apply capabilities to adjacent problems **Examples:** - Amazon expanding from books to cloud services (AWS) - Apple expanding from computers to phones, wearables, services - Microsoft moving from software to cloud (Azure) and gaming (Xbox) **Risk Level:** High (new market, new product, new capabilities) **Typical Timeline:** 24+ months, requires significant investment --- ## Output Process 1. Define current market and product clearly 2. Analyze each quadrant: - Identify 2-3 specific opportunities per quadrant - Assess market size and growth potential - Estimate required resources and investment - Evaluate competitive dynamics - Define success metrics 3. Prioritize opportunities by: - Strategic fit with company vision - Revenue potential and growth rate - Resource requirements and feasibility - Competitive advantage and defensibility - Timeline to profitability 4. Develop go-to-market strategy for top 2-3 opportunities 5. Create phased roadmap and milestones 6. Identify risks and mitigation plans 7. Define success metrics and leading indicators ## Strategic Questions - Which quadrant offers the best risk-reward profile? - Where do our capabilities give us competitive advantage? - Which opportunities align best with our vision and values? - What partnerships or acquisitions would accelerate growth? - How does each option impact our brand and positioning? ## Notes - Market penetration is lowest risk; diversification is highest risk - Most companies should excel in one quadrant before expanding - Avoid spreading too thin across all four quadrants simultaneously - Consider sequential strategy: penetration first, then market development - Reassess Ansoff Matrix annually or when market conditions shift ## Worked Example — Acme (personal-finance app) **Current position:** personal expense-tracking app, sold to individual Indian consumers via app stores. ~50k MAU, the product auto-categorizes spending from uploaded bank statements. | Quadrant | A concrete Acme move | Risk | Verdict | |---|---|---|---| | **Market Penetration** (same product, same market) | Improve categorization accuracy + add bill reminders to lift retention and referrals among existing Indian consumers | Low | **Do first.** Cheapest growth; retention compounds every other quadrant. | | **Market Development** (same product, new market) | Same app, new segment: small-business owners who need expense tracking for GST; or new geography (Southeast Asia) | Medium | **Second.** Product is proven; the unknown is whether the *new* segment has the same burning pain (validate as a beachhead first). | | **Product Development** (new product, same market) | New product for the *same* Indian consumers: a savings-goals/investing-nudge feature, or a credit-score tracker | Medium | **Third.** Trusted relationship + existing distribution, but a genuinely new build with its own adoption curve. | | **Diversification** (new product, new market) | A lending product (BNPL) sold to SMBs — new product *and* new buyer, new regulatory regime, new sales motion | High | **Avoid for now.** This is the diversification trap dressed as ambition. | **The honest read:** with 50k MAU and unproven retention, Acme belongs almost entirely in **Penetration**. Everything to the right and below is a *future* sequence, not a *parallel* program. A roadmap that puts one bet in all four quadrants this year is the "we're doing all four" failure mode below. ## When NOT to use the Ansoff Matrix - **Pre-PMF.** If you have not yet won your current product in your current market, "growth options" is the wrong question — Penetration is the only honest quadrant, and the real work is finding fit (see `lean-startup`, `crossing-the-chasm`). Ansoff is a *growth* tool, not a *fit-finding* tool. - **When the real question is "should this market exist?"** Ansoff assumes you grow within or adjacent to a known market. If you suspect the winning move is to make the competition irrelevant by creating uncontested space, that is a `blue-ocean-strategy` question — Ansoff's four boxes will herd you into existing-market thinking and miss it. - **For prioritizing features inside one product.** Ansoff is a portfolio/expansion lens, not a backlog-ranking tool. Use `prioritization-methods` (RICE/WSJF) for that. ## Pitfalls / Failure modes 1. **The diversification trap.** Diversification (new product + new market) feels like the most ambitious, "transformational" play, so leaders over-weight it. It is the quadrant with the *highest* failure rate because you are simultaneously learning a new product, a new buyer, a new channel, and often a new regulatory regime — with none of your existing advantages transferring. Most "bold pivots" that die are unforced diversification. Require an explicit answer to "what existing competency actually transfers?" before greenlighting. 2. **"We're doing all four."** A growth deck with one initiative in every quadrant is not a strategy — it is the absence of one. The whole point of Ansoff is *sequencing under finite resources*. Spreading thin guarantees you dominate no quadrant. Force a rank, fund the top one or two, and explicitly defer the rest. 3. **Mislabeling the quadrant to feel safer.** Teams routinely file a genuinely-new product as "Product Development" (medium risk) when the buyer is also new — making it actually Diversification (high risk). The risk label drives the investment case, so an honest quadrant assignment is load-bearing. Test it: *is the buyer the same person/budget as today?* If no, you are at least one column to the right of where you claimed. 4. **Treating "new market" as just a new geography.** A new *segment* in the same geography (consumer → SMB) is often a harder market shift than a new *country* in the same segment, because the job, the buying process, and the willingness-to-pay all change. Don't assume "Market Development" is automatically low-medium risk; size the *behavioral* distance, not the map distance. 5. **Annual-only reassessment in a fast market.** The note says "reassess annually," but a competitor launch, a regulatory change, or a failed quadrant bet should trigger an immediate re-map. A stale Ansoff matrix justifies last year's commitments against this year's reality. ## Cross-links - **`crossing-the-chasm`** (Geoffrey Moore) — when a quadrant move means reaching a *new* customer type (especially Market Development or Diversification), the chasm between early adopters and the mainstream is the dominant risk. Pair Ansoff's *where to grow* with Crossing the Chasm's *how to cross into that segment*, and pick a **beachhead** (see `beachhead-segment`) inside the new market rather than attacking it broadly. - **`blue-ocean-strategy`** — Ansoff operates inside *existing* market boundaries (red ocean). When the strongest move is to redraw the boundary and create uncontested demand, Blue Ocean is the complementary lens; use it to pressure-test whether you are competing in a crowded box when you could be making a new one. - **`porters-five-forces`** — before committing to any new-market quadrant, run Five Forces on that target market's structure; an attractive-looking quadrant can sit in a structurally brutal industry. - **`prioritization-methods`** — once you have 2-3 candidate moves across quadrants, score them (RICE / WSJF) to make the sequencing decision defensible rather than political. --- ### Further Reading - [The Product Management Frameworks Compendium + Templates](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/the-product-frameworks-compendium)