An adjacent market can look unusually attractive because the company already knows the customers. It may supply a related service, recognise the equipment and have a familiar name. The growth account then assumes that these advantages will travel intact into the new activity. Sometimes they will. Sometimes the new activity changes why another party is willing to work with the company at all. A service relationship is not merely a route to cross-selling. It can depend on a particular division of roles that the proposed growth would alter.
Our fictional parts-brand proposal raised that question. Reqvathi already supplied parts within maintenance relationships, but establishing a separate brand was a different strategic position. Equipment makers who referred work could now see a supplier with ambitions closer to their own commercial space. The proposal could still have been attractive. The point was to assess that change deliberately rather than treat the existing referral account as a fixed benefit while presenting the brand opportunity as wholly additional. The company needed to understand which role it wanted to strengthen and what maintaining that role would require.
The commercial sponsor made a reasonable case for change. Depending on other organisations for referrals can limit a service business's options. A brand may make its proposition easier to recognise, deepen direct customer relationships and create a route to work it cannot otherwise access. Rejecting that ambition simply because established partners dislike it would give those partners excessive influence over the company's future. Strategy should therefore resist two convenient answers: that adjacency is automatically attractive, and that existing relationships must never be disturbed. The choice needs an actual account of the alternatives.
Twenty-four equipment-maker relationships were active sources of referred work in the case. Seven expressed written concerns. The other seventeen had not expressed those concerns during the review, which did not establish their support. That distinction mattered because the company could otherwise tell two misleading stories from the same record. It could describe seven objections as proof that the whole channel would close, or describe the remaining seventeen as confirmation that the route was broadly accepted. Neither interpretation was justified. The evidence required examination of the relationships and their commercial meaning, not a vote constructed from silence.
## Examine the relationship behind the opportunity
A strategic comparison should ask what each route asks the enterprise to become. The branded route would require a proposition, capabilities, responsibilities and relationships appropriate to that position. The service route also needed investment and a reason for customers and equipment makers to continue choosing it. Keeping the existing position was not a decision to avoid change altogether. It was a choice about where development would be directed. A useful account would explain the capability being strengthened, the work the company would decline and the dependencies it was knowingly retaining.
Our review cost ₹56 lakh. The authorised decision declined the ₹18 crore brand proposal and approved a bounded ₹2.1 crore tooling and training upgrade for the service business. These amounts should not be presented as though the company bought the same future more cheaply. The upgrade did not provide a separate parts brand, and the proposal price did not become a saving simply because it was not committed. Likewise, the review did not establish how much revenue had been protected. The outcome was a selected position and an associated investment, with potential opportunities surrendered.
There is an uncomfortable element to such a decision. A narrower role can appear less ambitious, particularly when the proposed adjacent market carries an appealing growth figure. Leaders may feel obliged to attach a larger future to every strategy presentation. Yet an enterprise can become more capable within a chosen role without moving into every nearby activity. The quality of that choice depends on its evidence and consequences, not on whether the next diagram contains more boxes. It also requires honesty about the dependence that remains: a service position may continue to rely on referrals the company does not fully control.
## A partner's objection deserves assessment, not an automatic veto
The opposite risk is using strategic focus as a polite explanation for avoiding a difficult transition. Existing relationships can feel safer simply because they are familiar. A board should ask what evidence supports remaining in the current position and what could cause management to reconsider. That question does not require pretending that the declined route was worthless. It asks whether the company has chosen deliberately rather than allowed the strongest existing partner or the most comfortable operating habit to decide. A credible recommendation can acknowledge that a different enterprise, with different capabilities or ownership expectations, might reasonably choose the brand.
The later diagnostic trial examined a related issue from another direction. Customers were offered a service whose recommendation could lead to subsequent repair work. The commercial relationship had to make that sequence understandable. Some wanted monitoring, others periodic assessment, and several remained undecided. A universal subscription account would have concealed the different decisions customers were considering. Similarly, bundling repair into the first relationship might simplify a sales route while changing how a customer interpreted the advice. The strategy needed to examine the service position, not merely choose the revenue label that looked most predictable.
In that trial, six monitoring and eight periodic-assessment routes proceeded within a ₹95 lakh authorisation. The review recorded ₹73 lakh spent and ₹22 lakh unspent. Those facts described a bounded experiment rather than a recurring-revenue result. Technical and commercial owners retained the actual service arrangements. The case does not argue that bundled services are always unsuitable or that diagnostic work becomes impartial merely because contracts are separate. It asks whether the relationship is clear enough for a customer to understand what they are buying and which later choices remain open.
## Choose the position and invest in its consequences
For outside oversight, I would want the board to hear the existing relationships and the proposed new position in the same conversation. A growth recommendation should say which assumptions about today's business continue, which could change and what management has done to examine them. Directors need to understand the investment and the opportunity surrendered without taking over individual partner negotiations. They should be able to challenge an account that counts the benefit of a new role while quietly assuming that every advantage of the previous role remains available on identical terms.
The question I carry into a new growth proposal is therefore about identity in a practical commercial sense: why do the relevant parties choose this company, and how would the proposal change that reason? The answer may support a substantial move, a narrower investment or further work before commitment. It should not be decided by the comforting word adjacent. A strategy becomes more credible when the company chooses its place with an account of the relationships it needs, accepts the opportunities that choice gives up and invests in the capabilities that make the selected role worth occupying.