Thanks All for some great comments. As a practitioner I use many models and Ansoff is a useful too. Currently being used by Waitrose and govt departments in the UK – they’re not just using one strategy but many. Perhaps we now call this an ‘omni strategy’ model?

Interesting comments Peter, Michael.

I haven’t read the innovators dilemma, but surely Ansoff is part of looking at innovation – it’s common for companies to focus on existing markets and products and this helps them break out of that and think of new opportunities often made available through digital techniques – Ansoff can be used for this too.

Certainly, marketing has changed radically and one of the benefits is the technique of testing propositions rapidly – I’m sure Ansoff would have approved of that. I bet many are still gambling Peter since they don’t use the crowd to test new ideas!

Any model can become restrictive if it is regarded as a formula for
success. The strength of Ansoff is that it provokes thought about
definitions – what is our market, what are the emerging products and how
can we incorporate them into our business? Used in that way, The
Ansoff matrix is a good model to avoid the situation described in the
|Innovators Dilemma, as part of the strategic thinking and planning process.

A second factor is that markets have changed – they are not the rigid, unchanging mass of prospects they once were. Now it is more like a swarm – twisting this way and that at speeds faster than any company can follow.

Lastly this model was developed before most of us were born. Before the computer, never mind the internet. It comes from the days when strategy was a best guess – a gamble on what the future would be. Now we have data, there is no need to gamble.