Shape & Lead
Clients ask for it. Will they pay for it?
Where does responsibility carry a price, and how large is that market for us?
Where does responsibility carry a price, and how large is that market for us?
The questions are now in the tenders. Carbon per unit, origin of the materials, labour standards down the chain, a certification or two. The sales team answers them and wins or loses on price anyway. Or so it seems. In parallel a competitor has launched a responsible range, and whether it sells is a question the sales team cannot answer. The CEO has read, in NYU Stern's Sustainable Market Share Index, that sustainability-marketed products carry a disproportionate share of growth in consumer goods and wants to know what that means for a B2B supplier of components, for a bank or for a logistics operator.
So the question lands on the strategy director's desk in its usual form: is there a market for the responsible offer, how big is it, is it ours to take. The answer that comes back is a market sizing slide. A market sizing slide does not say whether a client will pay.
Where to go and where not to.
An adjacent market looks close by definition. The ones worth entering are the ones where the company has a structural right to win: capabilities, economics and relationships that create a durable advantage over the next entrant. That combination now includes the responsibility posture, because procurement criteria, access rules and trust are closing some positions to companies that cannot show verified performance and opening them to those that can. The decision is to tell the two apart before capital is committed: the positions where responsibility is the qualification and those where it is a slogan on a slide.
The work is the Market Opportunity Scan. It replaces the voice-of-customer loop with a structural read of market fit: faster, sharper, anchored in competitive economics rather than in stated preferences, which is what makes it different from asking clients whether they would pay.
We start from what the best clients already do next. For a scale-up that is the customer base and the unit economics; for a portfolio company it is its own competitive position, read without the sector average. We define the positions where the company has a real entry advantage and we eliminate those that look attractive on a sizing slide and disappear under competitive scrutiny. Then we test what remains against four filters: accessible size, competitive density, margin structure and feasibility within the current operating model. For the CFO each surviving position is tested against capital availability and payback horizon; positions you cannot fund leave the map.
Alongside, we track the signals: where responsible challengers are entering your markets, where procurement criteria are tightening and which positions are closing to companies that cannot demonstrate what they claim. That is where the responsible offer stops being a marketing question and becomes a right-to-win question.
What leaves the room is a ranked opportunity map: three to five growth vectors, each with a capital requirement, a time to revenue, a defensibility score and a strategic fit rating, with the shared value each position creates for the clients, partners and communities who make it hold. The map is built to survive the questions a capital committee will ask.
In the case that follows we take a company whose offer sells and whose right to operate in the next market is not yet earned: the demand is real, the permission is not. The scan separates the two before the expansion case reaches the board.
Most market entry failures are governance failures. The opportunity was real. The right to operate was never assessed.
ReadPhilippe Bourrat, COO & Co-Founder. Twenty-eight years at Ducker Carlisle as Managing Principal, advising industrial and B2B leaders across Europe on growth strategy, customer intelligence and commercial transformation: smart buildings and materials, mobility and process electrification, private equity. He holds this situation end to end: the market, the client's willingness to pay and the position worth taking.
Customers check the claim against the proof, and both against the price. The scan looks for the positions where that check already works in your favour.
Read the force in Our Approach: force 02The tender questions you keep answering, the competitor's range you cannot read, the market you suspect is there. Tell us where it binds and we will tell you where to start.