[irq]: serially techie

portfolio vs go-to-market

[Context: technology services business.]

The portfolio is composed of service offerings. Who delivers the services and how is highly variable, but it only matters that they can be delivered. In general, there’s a 1-to-1 between the services in the portfolio and those sold in the marketplace. That which is marketed is a discrete element in the portfolio.

Marketing messages come and go. Things that clients need (and think they need) come and go. “Solutions” come and go. But skills and delivery capabilities are much less volatile over time. The portfolio represents both an internal capability (to deliver a particular service) and an external presentation of that capability to the marketplace. When there’s a 1-to-1 between the two— 1) the go-to-market becomes brittle because these things change at differing rates or 2) the portfolio becomes littered with things that don’t make sense, overlap one-another, etc., in order to match the moment’s marketing vogue.

If you break the 1-to-1, then the portfolio can represent an internal capability while the go-to-market represents the set of solutions that are selling, that will sell, and that you want to sell in the marketplace. What parts of the portfolio make up any given solution become variable and go-to-market solution development becomes a composition task. If and only if a legitimately new service capability is needed to deliver a solution, such capability is developed and added to the portfolio.

These tools should not be sources of brittleness and inertia, but instead of flexibility and competitive advantage. Make’em so.

The portfolio != the go-to-market.