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.
Company Fit is BRI Associates' assessment of how well a strategy hypothesis aligns with the sponsoring organization's Resources, Processes, and Priorities (RPP) — the attributes that determine what the organization can actually execute. It is the diagnostic behind the Implementation Approach dimension of the BRI Strategy Framework: a strategy can be desirable and feasible in the abstract yet still fail because the organization's resources, processes, and priorities are optimized for its core business and pull against the new venture. A poor Company Fit — an RPP mismatch — signals friction with the core business and real risk to implementation, well before execution begins.
Competing alternatives are all the alternative ways a target market can choose to address their need or job. They include direct competitors, substitutes in adjacent categories, potential entrants, and — always — the status quo, or do-nothing option. BRI insists on the last one because the most common reason a new offering fails is not that a rival wins, but that the customer decides the problem isn't worth changing for.
Value network actors who provide products or services that complement the organization's offering and help form a more complete or valuable whole solution for the end customer.
The core business of the organization. What most employees and outsiders would say is the primary business of the organization.
Core Innovation is a class of innovation project focused on enhancements to existing products or services within existing markets — optimizing and extending what a business already does for the customers it already serves. It is the lowest-risk and most predictable of the three project classes that together define a balanced portfolio mix, alongside Adjacent and Disruptive Innovation. Most organizations concentrate the largest share of their innovation resources here, since core projects protect and grow the existing business — but a portfolio weighted entirely toward core leaves no exposure to new sources of growth.
The part of the whole solution delivered directly with the organization's production units — what the customer receives when they buy the product.
