10 New Methods: Strategy, Ops and Growth

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Go-to-Market

GTM Plan

A GTM Plan coordinates every element of a product launch: target customer, value proposition, pricing, distribution, marketing, sales approach, and launch timeline. It answers the questions that separate successful launches from expensive misses - who is this for, why will they buy it, how will they find out, and what does success look like at 90 days?

When to use it:

• You're launching a product and different teams have different ideas about the target customer
• Marketing is messaging one thing while sales is promising another
• You need a shared contract that prevents launch-day chaos

Pricing Strategy

Pricing Strategy covers the six primary approaches - value-based, cost-plus, competitive, freemium, dynamic, and penetration. McKinsey's data shows a 1% pricing improvement yields 8.7% more operating profit on average. It's the highest-leverage commercial decision most teams never spend enough time on.

When to use it:

• You're launching and haven't validated willingness to pay
• Competitors have shifted pricing and you haven't responded
• You're losing deals but aren't sure if the problem is price or positioning

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Measuring Innovation

Innovation Accounting

Innovation Accounting is Eric Ries's framework for measuring progress when traditional financial metrics tell you nothing useful. It works in three phases: establish a baseline with actionable metrics, run experiments to move those metrics, then decide whether to pivot or persevere. Cohort analysis replaces vanity metrics.

When to use it:

• Your startup's revenue is zero but you need to prove you're making progress
• Leadership wants numbers but the product is too early for financial reporting
• You're tracking "registered users" instead of something that matters

Innovation Scorecard

The Innovation Scorecard tracks the health of your innovation programme across multiple dimensions - pipeline strength, idea-to-launch conversion, time-to-market, and budget utilisation. It's the dashboard that tells you whether your innovation engine is running or stalling.

When to use it:

• Your company runs innovation programmes but can't measure their effectiveness
• Leadership asks "what's the ROI of innovation?" and nobody has an answer
• You need to compare performance across innovation initiatives or business units

Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score asks one question: "How likely are you to recommend us?" Scores from 0-6 are Detractors, 7-8 are Passives, 9-10 are Promoters. Subtract %Detractors from %Promoters and you get your NPS. Simple to run, easy to benchmark, and it forces follow-up conversations about why.

When to use it:

• You need a baseline measure of customer loyalty that's easy to track over time
• You want to identify your most unhappy customers before they churn
• You're benchmarking against competitors or industry averages

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Strategic Mapping

Wardley Maps

Wardley Maps plot your value chain on two axes: visibility to the user (vertical) and evolution from genesis to commodity (horizontal). The result shows which components are competitive differentiators, which are becoming commoditised, and where you should build versus buy. Created by Simon Wardley, it's one of the few strategy tools that accounts for how technology evolves over time.

When to use it:

• You're making build-vs-buy decisions and need a framework beyond gut feel
• Your strategy discussions focus on what you do but not on where the market is heading
• You want to spot opportunities where emerging technology changes the game

Business Process Modelling

Business Process Modelling makes invisible workflows visible. You diagram who does what, in what order, with what inputs and outputs - using a standardised visual language (typically BPMN 2.0). The value is clarity: a new team member can follow the process, and a process owner can see where things break down.

When to use it:

• Teams do the same work differently and nobody knows which way is right
• You're onboarding new staff and there's no documentation of how things actually work
• You need to find bottlenecks before automating a process

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Operations & Growth

Product Operations

Product Operations handles the operational infrastructure so product managers can focus on strategy and customers. It spans four domains: data infrastructure, tooling and systems, processes and frameworks, and enablement. It's the function that emerges when a product team outgrows one PM's ability to juggle everything.

When to use it:

• Your product org has grown past 5-10 PMs and consistency is slipping
• PMs spend more time on process and data wrangling than on customer problems
• You need to standardise planning cadences, review rhythms, and tooling across teams

Challenge Prizes

Challenge Prizes are competitions that offer a reward for solving a defined problem - think XPRIZE or government innovation challenges. Instead of prescribing a solution, you define the outcome and let teams compete to find the best approach. The model attracts diverse solvers you'd never find through traditional procurement.

When to use it:

• You have a hard problem and want approaches from outside your usual network
• Traditional procurement isn't producing innovative solutions
• You want to generate public engagement around an important challenge

Community Building

Community Building is the practice of creating and nurturing a group of people with shared interests around your product, brand, or mission. A strong community generates feedback, advocacy, and retention that paid channels can't replicate.

When to use it:

• You want organic growth driven by word-of-mouth and advocacy
• Your users have questions and problems that other users can help solve
• You need a channel for honest feedback that isn't filtered through support tickets

Writing Test Cases

Writing Test Cases covers the structured approach to defining test conditions, inputs, expected results, and pass/fail criteria before testing begins. Good test cases catch bugs. Great test cases document what your product is supposed to do and serve as living specifications.

When to use it:

• QA is finding bugs but missing the ones that matter to users
• Your team argues about whether behaviour is "a bug or a feature"
• You need to hand testing off to someone who doesn't know the product intimately

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What's Next

The Innovation Accounting → Innovation Scorecard → Net Promoter Score sequence covers measurement from early-stage experiments through to customer loyalty tracking. Start with accounting when you're validating, move to the scorecard when you're scaling, and layer NPS on top to track the customer relationship.

For strategic planning, try running a Wardley Map before writing your GTM Plan. Understanding where your components sit on the evolution axis changes how you position and price.

Got a method you'd like to see added? Let us know on the feedback page.