A clear yes on both gates doesn't finish the case. It brings you to its most consequential question. Four modes recur, and each trades the same five things in a different proportion:
| Mode | Speed to market | Control | Capital required | Execution risk | Reversibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic / greenfield build | Slowest | Full | High, spread over years | High, share must be earned from zero | Hardest to unwind (sunk local assets) |
| Acquisition | Fastest | Full, once integrated | Highest, up front (plus a control premium) | Integration risk replaces share-building risk | Easier to divest than to unwind a greenfield build, still costly |
| Joint venture / partnership | Fast | Shared | Lower (shared with partner) | Partner-selection and governance risk | Exit clauses can be pre-negotiated |
| Licensing / franchise | Fastest, lowest commitment | Lowest | Lowest | Brand and quality-control risk sits with the licensee | Easiest to unwind |
Two things matter more than memorizing the table. First, the "right" mode depends on why Gate 1 and Gate 2 came out the way they did. Say a market scored high on attractiveness but showed a real capability gap in distribution. That's a natural fit for a joint venture, where you borrow the partner's distribution, or for licensing, where you avoid needing it at all. Strong capability against merely-decent attractiveness points the other way, toward a lean, staged organic entry. An expensive acquisition makes little sense in a market that was never going to be that large. Second, put a number on it wherever you can, even a rough one.
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Worked example: payback on building versus buying
Take a payback illustration (synthetic). A market's mature annual profit pool is estimated at $10 million. Building organically takes $6 million of upfront capital and roughly $1 million a year of losses for three years while share is earned. In year four it reaches a 40%-share, $4-million-a-year run rate. Call it $9 million invested before the business turns cash-generative. That's paid back roughly two and a quarter years into the $4-million run rate, so the all-in payback is about five to six years from a standing start.
Now try buying instead. An existing player holds a quarter of that market, about $2.5 million of current profit. It costs an eight-times-profit purchase price of $20 million, and modest integration synergies lift run-rate profit to roughly $3 million a year from day one. That pays back in a little under seven years. It's slower in raw payback terms, but it carries none of the multi-year uncertainty about whether the organic build really captures its assumed 40% share.
Neither answer is universally "right". A sound recommendation names the trade-off, capital efficiency and speed against execution certainty, and lets the company's risk appetite and balance-sheet capacity decide.
{
"skill": "Fast reference-magnitude and capability research for a market-entry case, without letting a model's fluent guess stand in for a checked fact",
"use": "Use AI to sketch a first-pass attractiveness scorecard skeleton (the five criteria, sensible starting weights) or to list the kinds of regulatory and cost-position facts a real diligence process would check for a named market, so you spend your case-prep time filling in and defending real numbers rather than inventing the checklist from scratch.",
"tools": ["Chat assistants — Claude, ChatGPT", "Research / agentic tools — a browsing-enabled assistant for a real (non-case) market, still verifying what it cites"],
"prompt": "I'm assessing whether <COMPANY TYPE> should enter <MARKET>. Draft an attractiveness scorecard with five criteria and sensible starting weights (do not assign scores — I will do that), and separately list the five or six capability facts (distribution, cost position, regulatory, etc.) a real due-diligence process would check before recommending an entry mode. Do not state a specific market-size number or duty rate unless you can name the exact source.",
"verify": "Every score you assign, and every capability fact you rely on, must trace to something you can defend out loud — a stated market-size source, a named competitor's share, an actual customs schedule — never the model's fluent-sounding default. For a real (non-case) market, this means Guardrail #1 (Trace) to a primary source such as a government tariff schedule or a market-research report before any number reaches your recommendation.",
"diy": "You must be able to build and defend the scorecard's weights and the capability checklist's categories from first principles without the tool — that ownership is exactly what Gates 1 and 2 of this section teach, and a partner will ask why you weighted a criterion the way you did, not what a model suggested.",
"tools_market": "IN"
}