The case studies below are anonymized and composited to protect client confidentiality. The dynamics, decisions, and outcomes are representative of actual engagements. We are happy to walk through the un-redacted versions on a call under NDA.
The puzzle: A specialty surgical device with the highest clinical performance in its category was steadily losing share to a competitor whose product objectively performed worse. The leadership team wanted us to validate a "double-down on clinical superiority" investment.
What we found: Surgeons weren't hiring the device for clinical superiority. They were hiring it for predictability of OR turnover time. The competitor's product was worse on the metric the company optimized — and better on the metric that mattered.
The decision: Stop investing in a clinical capability the customer wasn't hiring for. Reposition around throughput. Pricing model changed; sales motion changed; OR-time guarantee added. Revenue grew 38% in 18 months on the same installed base.
The puzzle: Three internal teams had each built a credible plan for a digital services adjacency, and all three had been killed by capital allocation review. The CEO was out of patience.
What we found: The proposals were not bad. The host organization's processes — capital review thresholds, hurdle rates, gross-margin floors — made them structurally impossible to fund, regardless of merit. The values reflexively rejected anything below 28% gross margin in year one.
The decision: Stand up an autonomous unit with separate capital, separate compensation, separate review cadence. The CFO held a single line: "do not let the unit's metrics roll into ours yet." 14 months in, the unit had a $1.1B identified pipeline and the CEO stopped asking when it would hit core margins.
The puzzle: The market leader in a horizontal SaaS category was facing 11 well-funded entrants, all priced 60–80% lower with thinner feature sets. Sales reflexively wanted to discount. Product reflexively wanted to add features.
What we found: The entrants were not competing on price; they were targeting the bottom 30% of customers who had been over-served for three product cycles and would have switched at parity. The next 12 months would be sustaining; the 24 after that would be disruptive.
The decision: Launch a deliberately limited "lite" tier inside a separate brand and P&L, sized to absorb the over-served segment. Raise prices on the enterprise tier to fund it. Three years later, the company had stabilized share at 71% of its prior peak — a result no defensive plan would have delivered.
The puzzle: Board had approved a $400M acquisition of a contract manufacturer to "secure the supply chain." Bankers were already in due diligence.
What we found: The category was modularizing rapidly at the manufacturing layer. The margin pool was migrating in the opposite direction — toward branded ingredient suppliers who controlled the flavor systems. Buying the manufacturer would lock in the part of the chain that was about to become commoditized.
The decision: Walk from the deal. Redirect the capital to a minority position in two flavor-systems firms. Conservative estimate of capital loss avoided versus value created: ~$240M over five years.
We'll share un-redacted versions under NDA, including the analysis, the decision memos, and the things that went wrong along the way.