When a country needs growth, the conversation often goes straight to the next launch.
A new brand is exciting. It gets a kick-off meeting, a budget line and a lot of attention.
Ansoff's growth matrix is a useful brake. It sets out four routes to growth, and the risk rises with each step.
- Market penetration. Existing brands, existing customers. Better coverage, better calls, fewer prescribers lost to habit.
- Market development. Existing brands, new customers. A new segment, a new channel, a new city.
- Product development. New brands or line extensions for customers you already know.
- Diversification. New brands for new customers, often a whole new therapy area. Two unknowns at once.
In my experience, the first route is the one most often skipped, because it sounds ordinary. Yet it is where the team already has the relationships, the market knowledge and the product confidence.
Before signing off a move into the fourth box, I ask one plain question: what is still left in the first?
Sometimes the honest answer is very little, and the bigger step is right. Then take it deliberately, with the people and capacity to support it.
“Every step away from what you know adds risk. Take it on purpose.”
Lesson 4 of 16 in Step 1: Setting strategy, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.