Market & Growth Intelligence

Overview

Explain how the external growth system works after Layer 0 has framed the business. Determine whether demand/category structure is expanding, who captures the profit, why the company should gain or lose share, which reported growth vectors are real and incremental, and whether geographic/channel expansion is replicating rather than cannibalizing.

Read references/methodology-router.md and references/research-foundations.md. Load focused references only when their trigger applies.

Required investigation

1. Run the Metric Comparability Gate before any multi-period trend. Mark material series COMPARABLE, ADJUSTED_COMPARABLE, NOT_DIRECTLY_COMPARABLE, or UNRESOLVED; state the demand-evidence basis (for example sell-in vs sell-through, usage, bookings, or GMV) when channel inventory can distort demand. Where the company reports a profit measure of its own definition ("core profit", "adjusted EBITDA"), also run the mandatory Adjusted-to-Statutory Reconciliation and record adjusted_profit_reconciliation; an unreconciled adjusted figure may not be used as a growth base.
2. Diagnose Demand & Category Evolution using the economic demand unit appropriate to the business. Classify the regime as structural/cyclical tailwind, stable, headwind, or unresolved. Do not substitute consultant TAM for demand evidence.
3. Build the competitive system: direct rivals, substitutes, entrants, relative growth/share, and the causal mechanism behind share gain/loss. A low share is not a runway thesis.
4. When value capture is non-obvious, map Industry Structure / Profit Pool / Value Migration and identify who receives incremental economics as the market grows.
5. Build Growth Decomposition in two levels: portfolio/category/geography momentum + market-share change + M&A/divestiture; then reconcile operating drivers such as volume, price, mix, existing-unit productivity, new units, product, channel, customer usage, and geography without double counting.
6. For material channel/product changes, test net incrementality: new buyers/customers and occasions less cannibalization, including halo/recapture effects. Also test Expansion Incrementality for new stores, facilities, capacity, or geographies: new-unit contribution net of cannibalization/density effects on existing units. Never label delivery/app/channel or footprint growth highly incremental without evidence.
7. For material cross-border expansion, test International Replication using local adoption/productivity plus CAGE/AAA logic only as relevant. Store/capacity count alone is not proof.
8. Track major growth initiatives as Promise → Action → Result and classify Evidence Trajectory as improving, stable, deteriorating, or unresolved.
9. If new evidence invalidates the Layer 0 frame, emit SCOPE_CHALLENGE; do not silently redefine the company.