GridPortfolio strategy

Markets, segments and scenarios

You have too many segments and not enough resources.

  • Segmentation
  • Multi-criteria scoring
  • Scenarios
  • Traceability

Which markets, products and segments should get the effort — and which should stop getting it? The question comes up every year, it gets settled in a meeting, and six months later nobody remembers what the choice rested on.

Grid turns a scattered discussion into comparable options. The criteria are set before scoring, judgements stay attributed, and the decision keeps a trace of what founded it.

Set up a first conversationSee an example file

LEADERSHIP QUESTION

Where to play?

WHAT GRID LETS YOU DECIDE

Five questions your portfolio is already asking.

01

Where should the sales effort go?

Not every segment deserves the same investment, and nobody dares say so out loud.

02

Can the current portfolio deliver the ambition?

If the sum of the markets you address does not carry the target, the problem is not execution.

03

Which segments do we defend, and against whom?

An established position is protected with a budget, not an intention.

04

What should be tested before committing?

Some options cannot be decided: they are tried out at a capped cost.

05

What should we exit?

The most profitable question, and the only one nobody asks unprompted.

STEERING LOOP

Structure, score, compare, decide, revise.

Revision is not a comfort option: it is what keeps the decision defensible when the assumptions change.

  1. 01Frame the ambition and the horizon
  2. 02Structure the portfolio: markets, segments, products, geographies
  3. 03Set the criteria, before scoring
  4. 04Score the options, with the author of each judgement
  5. 05Compare scenarios — typically three allocations of effort
  6. 06Decide: invest, defend, experiment, exit
  7. 07Revise quarterly

THE PORTFOLIO FILE

What remains after the meeting.

The last section is not an admission of weakness. It is what lets you say, six months from now, why the choice still holds — or why it no longer does.

  • The ambition — target, horizon, the third party before whom the choice is defended
  • The structured portfolio — comparable options, declared perimeter
  • The criteria and their weights — defined before scoring
  • The scoring — each judgement carries its author and date
  • The scenarios — allocations compared, differences visible
  • The decision — with amount, owner and deadline
  • Assumptions and missing data — what the decision rests on without evidence

CONCRETE EXAMPLE

Three segments, four criteria, one decision.

An industrial company compares three segments by their potential, competitive intensity, the sales effort required and its real ability to succeed.

The first segment comes out on top for potential but last for capability: it becomes an experiment at a capped cost, not an investment. The second, less attractive, is already held: it moves to a budgeted defence. The third is exited — the decision that frees up the resources for the other two.

Illustrative case. The scores shown are the weighted sum of the four criteria, always presented with their components: a score ranks nothing on its own, it makes the disagreement readable.

BEFORE AND AFTER GRID

Grid does not work alone.

Upstream, Atlas supplies the facts, sources and past decisions: you do not start from a blank page at each exercise.

Downstream, Plot puts the retained scenarios in perspective, Mix quantifies price, volume and margin for the segments kept, Calc makes the calculations auditable, Map examines the dependencies that could bring down the chosen allocation, and Pilot projects the trajectory in front of an investor or a banker.

The portfolio file is the same object all along the chain. It is not copied from one workspace to the next.

HOW TO GET IT

Three modes, as for the other workspaces.

Self-service

Annual licence

Your teams structure, score and run the quarterly revision.

Scoped engagement

Fixed fee

We run the segmentation, the scoring workshop and the scenarios, then hand the file back in Grid. Typically four to six weeks.

Guided review

Subscription

We facilitate the quarterly revision and challenge the judgements that have aged.

All three modes exist for every workspace. The detail of each pricing model is on the Offer page.

See the three access modes in detail

WHO PRODUCES WHAT

The last line cannot be delegated.

DeliverableProduced by
Structured portfolio segmentationThe tool
Criteria grid and weightingsWorkshop run by inNOVAtio
Attractiveness × position scoringWorkshop, entered in Grid
Positioning mapsThe tool
Compared scenariosThe tool, from your assumptions
Log of assumptions and missing dataThe tool, completed in the workshop
Invest / defend / experiment / exit classificationYour decision, recorded in the file

You see what you pay for, and what nobody would do without support.

WHAT A MATRIX DOES NOT PROVE

Analytical frameworks are means, not arguments.

Grid draws on the relevant frameworks — Ansoff, growth matrix, attractiveness-position grids — because they structure the conversation. They do not replace it: anyone can draw a matrix, and two teams will put the same segment in two different boxes.

What makes the difference lies elsewhere: the criteria are set before scoring, each judgement carries its author, and disagreement stays visible instead of being averaged away.

A position in a matrix proves neither profitability nor feasibility. It prepares a decision; it does not replace it.

Grid does not choose the strategy. It makes portfolio decisions comparable, traceable and defensible.

What should you stop investing in this year?

A first thirty-minute conversation about your actual portfolio, with the question you will have to defend.

Set up a first conversationSee all situations