The index below includes terms that are frequently used in BRI's resource materials, the Growth Forge software, in the course of performing our services. They may often be used by, and in many cases, coined by other experts and academics working in the new business growth and innovation strategy domain. We started maintaining a collection of them here for the convenience of our clients.
Unit economics is the financial model of a single production unit or transaction — its revenue, direct costs, and contribution margin. It answers whether a business can be profitable at the level of one sale, before scale effects, and is the building block from which credible market sizing and cashflow forecasts are assembled. A strategy whose unit economics don't work at one unit rarely works at a million.
Unmet needs are the conscious or unconscious pains or desires of value-network actors — most often end customers — when trying to perform a task or achieve a desired outcome in a specific context. They are the demand-side starting point of any strategy: a solution earns the right to exist only by satisfying a need that current alternatives leave unmet. In BRI Associates' methodology, unmet needs are identified through jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) analysis — examining the job a customer is trying to get done, across the whole customer journey, is what exposes where existing solutions fall short — and are then translated into the Market Requirements a whole solution must satisfy.
A value network describes the key actors within a target domain, their roles relative to the sponsoring organization or its offering, and the relationships between them — also called an ecosystem or value chain. It spans more than the parties who help deliver the offering. It includes the actors who supply, distribute, complement, integrate, regulate, influence, and pay; the partners, suppliers, and build / buy / partner relationships that make up the implementation approach; and the competing alternatives — direct competitors, substitutes, and potential entrants — the offering is positioned against. A strategy has to account for the full set of parties whose choices determine whether it succeeds, not just the end buyer. In BRI Associates' methodology each actor also has its own jobs to be done that the whole solution may need to satisfy.
The main objects or entities within a value network. Can be defined at varying levels of specificity, from a category or grouping of similar entities to a single named organization, brand, or product.
A value proposition defines the customer segment you serve, the problem or unmet need you address, your offering and the category customers might place it in, and your main point of differentiation versus current alternatives. It is the high-level set of choices and assumptions the rest of a strategy hypothesis builds on.
A business concept and strategy hypothesis that minimal resources are applied to explore and develop.
