The question
A new regulation required thousands of companies to change how they operated, and in doing so opened a market that had not existed before. Leadership needed to decide how to take part and how to capture the value of that opportunity.
What everyone assumed
A product company's natural reaction is to treat the change as a sales opportunity, offering its product to those who now need it. But a market born from a rule has no channels, partners or established way of buying yet. Whoever only sells product arrives at a market no one has organized.
How we solved it
We started from the legal framework to understand what the rule required, of whom and by when. We segmented the companies affected, analyzed competitors and sized the opportunity.
With that we designed the route to market, which channels, partners and distribution, defined the product and built a business model for the company to organize the market around its proposition, with a value-based marketing approach.
The decision
Instead of competing as one more supplier, the company decided to act as a market maker, bringing partners and channels together so the offer reached the companies affected, with a roadmap to capture the value of the opportunity.
What applies to other companies
A new regulation does not only impose costs. It redistributes value between those who understand it first and those who merely endure it.
When a market is born from a rule, the advantage goes not to whoever has the best product, but to whoever organizes the market.