Business Identity Scope

Overview

Frame the company before market/TAM research. Determine what business it economically operates today, what customers hire it to do, which capabilities can transfer, and which future arenas are evidenced versus narrative.

Read references/methodology-map.md, references/market-scope-classification.md, and references/evidence-standard.md. Load other references only when their trigger applies.

Required investigation

1. Separate product definition, current economic business, customer job/occasion, capability definition, and management strategic direction.
2. Use Who × What Need × How when boundaries are ambiguous. Treat sector/GICS as metadata, never as business identity.
3. Classify every arena independently as PROVEN / EMERGING / OPTION / NARRATIVE. Separately tag arena_relationship as CORE_EXTENSION, CORE_COMPLEMENT, ADJACENT_STANDALONE, ENABLING_INFRASTRUCTURE, or UNRESOLVED. Potential market size cannot upgrade evidence class.
4. Detect Identity Transition when capital, customers, revenue, organization, or economics are moving into a new arena.
5. Run the scope stress test: too_narrow → candidate → too_broad. Explain how each would change competitors/TAM/runway downstream.
6. Use structural analogues only after comparing customer job, economic unit, route-to-market, capital model, power source, growth mechanism, and geographic replication. Record transfer limits.
7. Preserve a main alternative frame, framing risks, critical unknowns, and disconfirming evidence.

Output