Corporate, Growth & Customer Frameworks

Learning objectives

By the end you can:

1. State each of BCG growth-share, the Ansoff matrix, the marketing mix (4P, extended to 7P for services), McKinsey's 7S, jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), Blue Ocean Strategy, and scenario planning in one sentence each, naming the specific mechanism (the driver logic) each one claims to be true.
2. Build a BCG growth-share matrix from real inputs (relative market share (log-scaled against the largest other competitor, never absolute share) and market growth rate) classify a business unit into Star, Cash Cow, Question Mark, or Dog, and derive a defensible cash-allocation logic.
3. Classify a growth option on the Ansoff matrix (market penetration, market development, product development, diversification) and combine the label with a probability-weighted expected value and a capital-efficiency ratio, so the matrix becomes a computable warning rather than a decorative quadrant name.
4. Run the marketing mix (4P; 7P for services) as a coherence test, do Product, Price, Place, and Promotion (plus People, Process, Physical Evidence) send one consistent signal to the customer?, rather than a box-filling checklist that can be "completed" without ever becoming a strategy.
5. Diagnose an organization with McKinsey's 7S framework, distinguishing the three "hard" Ss (Strategy, Structure, Systems) from the four "soft" Ss (Shared Values, Skills, Staff, Style), and show concretely why a strategy memo alone changes nothing until the other six move with it.
6. Apply jobs-to-be-done to uncover the functional, emotional, and social job a customer is really "hiring" a product to do (including the job's real competitor, frequently non-consumption, not a rival brand) and connect the job to a testable prediction rather than a vague motivational story.
7. Build a strategy canvas and apply the four-actions grid (Eliminate–Reduce–Raise–Create) to design a Blue Ocean repositioning, and state precisely why "uncontested market space" has a shelf life.
8. Build a 2×2 scenario-planning matrix from two genuinely critical, genuinely uncertain driving forces, and use it to identify no-regrets moves (bets that pay off across multiple futures) rather than a single point forecast dressed up as a plan.
9. For every framework above, state its specific blind spot from first principles, never "it's oversimplified" as a generality, but the precise mechanism-level condition under which the framework's own driver logic breaks, and, given a real situation, choose which one or two frameworks actually answer the question in front of you.
10. (Productivity objective: R10 duality.) Use AI to accelerate a first-pass framework build, drafting a comparator table, widening an ERRC candidate list, drafting a first-cut 7S write-up, while keeping every figure's verification, every classification judgment, and the final diagnosis in your own hands.

The duality, stated once (R10). This module carries two objectives at once, as every module in this galaxy does. The understanding objective (items 1–9) is what the mastery gate rewards: naming each framework's driver logic and blind spot correctly, and building each one from real inputs rather than reciting its shape from memory. The productivity objective (item 10) is the payoff you keep: AI can draft a first-pass strategy canvas or a candidate ERRC grid in seconds. But a tool has no opinion about whether your two chosen "critical uncertainties" are actually the right two, or whether your relative-share denominator is the right rival. That judgment is what this module and its Framework Drill certify, and no tool can buy you a pass on the gate.

Prerequisites & connections

Builds on. CN3.01: you have already run a real Five Forces, the value chain, the 3C, and profit pools on two contrasting industries; this module applies that same discipline (evidence over recital) one level up, to frameworks classifying the corporation's portfolio and the customer's mind rather than industry structure. CN1.01, the MECE issue tree is the test every two-by-two here must still pass: a BCG matrix, an Ansoff matrix, a scenario matrix are all, underneath, algebraic or stakeholder cuts wearing a named framework's clothes, and a quadrant that isn't genuinely MECE is broken before you fill in a single box. CN2.01–CN2.02, case math and market sizing supply the arithmetic this module leans on constantly: a market's growth rate (the BCG y-axis) is a CAGR computed from two real data points, never a number you're handed; a relative share is a ratio you build, never an adjective you assert.