In a set of articles, I try to explore the strategic choices that the CEOs, shareholders, or investors in FoodTech companies need to make in order to succeed. All these ideas refer both to companies already established on the market, already having attracted some financing, as well as to the pure start-ups that exist only as ideas or are in the early stages of financing or venture capital attraction.
Strategic Choices Maps
There are several key points with analyzing strategic choices. The first step is the definition of the key choices that companies in the FoodTech industry make (available here). The second stage of the analysis, which we will be focusing on in this article, is the way how these choices or strategic dimensions interact with each other on the multi-dimensional strategic choices map. These maps are basically a graphical representation of the key dimensions across each other. In other words, these are tables that have two dimensions in them: one for the columns, the other for the rows.
For example, we could take the product dimension and the customers dimension. Along one axis there will be listed the products in this particular industry. Along the other dimension, on the other axis, there will be client segments for this industry. In general, there are several kinds of dimensions that normally can be applied to any industry or sub-industry being analyzed. These are so-called standard dimensions and they are described in-depth in a separate article (available here).
FoodTech Maps
Below I would like to focus on the specific dimensions and multi-dimensional maps that apply to FoodTech. Accordingly, I will take the particular customer segments and products for the FoodTech industry.
So in this example, we will be looking at the FoodTech targeted consumers vs. the FoodTech products. As a result, we get an area where these two dimensions interact and intersect (see the picture below with fictitious Future Meats, No sugar, and Kits companies shown as an example):
- plant and alt-protein production applies mostly to vegans and vegetarians, so these particular products would be targeting this particular customer segment;
- low gluten and low sugar foods are more widely targeting customer segments with wellness-oriented customers, but also seniors and, maybe, millennials and Generation Z;
- meal kit assembling definitely target millennials and Generation Z but could also target eco-friendly customers who are thinking about their carbon footprint and about reducing the packaging that they release into the environment.
So basically, we get the picture where you could see the products vs. specific customer segments described above show.
In conclusion, any dimensional map is just the starting point of analysis that should be carried out for any industry. Such research would be mapping the ideas or companies or strategic choices or ways of production across a number of such maps. In this way, you could see what is happening in two aspects:
- what your competitors or industry leaders are concentrating on: which segments and which products at the same time;
- what your company plans to be targeting both in terms of products and in terms of customers.