The right questions, asked in the right order, lead directly to the answers that matter.
Ask the wrong ones, or ask them out of sequence, and you end up defending a decision that was never the real one to make.
Miika Okko — Principal Advisor, Industrial Innovation & Growth
Companies rarely fail from a lack of effort or ideas. More often, they answer an expensive question before answering the question that would have made it meaningful — building before the market is defined, refining features before the customer outcome is understood, pricing an offer before proving anyone needs it.
The ten questions are not an arbitrary checklist. They follow the same 5 steps used across the Growth Path — grouped here by question number so you can jump straight to the questions you were sent to answer.
Step 1 · Customer needs · Questions 1–4
1. What business result are we seeking, and what must customers achieve to make it possible?
Decision
Define the bounded customer and business change.
Evidence needed
Strategic choices, economics, customer behaviour and the current trajectory.
Common mistake
Naming a project, product or technology as the result.
Reopen when
The mandate, investment boundary or value logic changes.
2. Who is the job executor, what job are they trying to get done, and in which situations?
Decision
Identify the person doing the job and the situations that shape it.
Evidence needed
Direct observation, interviews, work records and operating context.
Common mistake
Treating the user, beneficiary, buyer and account as one generic customer.
Reopen when
A different role or situation explains the strongest unmet need.
Useful tool
Job executor and situation map.
3. Which desired outcomes define success, which are underserved, and which segment cares most?
Decision
Prioritise measurable, solution-independent outcomes and a need-based segment.
Evidence needed
Outcome statements, importance and satisfaction comparisons, observed trade-offs and current alternatives.
Common mistake
Translating feature requests directly into requirements.
Reopen when
The outcome ranking or segment boundary changes.
Useful tool
Outcome and opportunity map.
4. How does the customer’s progress create value, and for whom?
Decision
Connect better customer outcomes to operational and economic value across the value chain.
Evidence needed
Time, cost, risk, quality, revenue and behaviour changes for the relevant actors.
Common mistake
Assuming that a user benefit automatically creates willingness to buy.
Reopen when
The beneficiary, buyer, value mechanism or magnitude changes.
Useful tool
Customer-to-business value map.
Step 2 · Matching solution · Question 5
5. Which solution mechanism should we pursue, and why?
Decision
Select the mechanism that best improves the prioritised outcomes.
Evidence needed
Several credible mechanisms compared against the same outcomes, adoption conditions, feasibility, cost and risk.
Common mistake
Evaluating only the first internal idea or loudest customer request.
Reopen when
Another mechanism creates the outcome more simply or a critical assumption fails.
Useful tool
Outcome-to-solution comparison.
Step 3 · Winning business model · Questions 6–7
6. Why would the best-fit customer choose this over what they do now?
Decision
Define the competitive alternative, differentiated value, best-fit customer and market category.
Evidence needed
Switching behaviour, buying criteria, alternatives, differentiated capabilities and customer language.
Common mistake
Describing generic benefits without giving the buyer the right category context.
Reopen when
The best-fit customer, alternative or category assumption changes.
Useful tool
Positioning canvas.
7. Can the whole business model create, deliver and capture value?
Decision
Align the position with price, revenue logic, channel, delivery, responsibilities, cost and unit economics.
Evidence needed
Willingness to pay, buying process, delivery effort, partner economics, cost-to-serve and realistic volumes.
Common mistake
Treating a credible value proposition as proof of a viable business.
Reopen when
Price, delivery responsibility, channel or unit economics no longer support the promise.
Useful tool
Business-model evidence map.
Step 4 · Validated demo · Question 8
8. Which assumptions must be true, and which should we test first?
Decision
Choose the smallest convincing demo or experiment that can change the next commitment.
Evidence needed
Customer behaviour, willingness to proceed, technical function, operating fit and commercial response against a threshold set in advance.
Common mistake
Treating a working demo or positive comments as proof of the whole business.
Reopen when
The test does not discriminate between go, revise, wait and stop.
Useful tool
Assumption and evidence card.
Step 5 · Scalable business · Questions 9–10
9. Can we sell and deliver the result repeatedly and profitably?
Decision
Establish whether buying, onboarding, delivery, operation and support can repeat under production conditions.
Evidence needed
Repeated sales and deliveries, onboarding effort, reliability, security, support load, margin and customer outcomes.
Common mistake
Calling one successful customer project a repeatable operating model.
Reopen when
Another delivery exposes exceptional manual work, unclear ownership or weak economics.
Useful tool
Repeatability and constraint review.
10. Which proven pattern is ready to scale?
Decision
Choose the customer, offer, acquisition and delivery pattern that deserves controlled expansion.
Evidence needed
Repeated value, stable economics, sufficient capacity and a known current constraint.
Common mistake
Scaling activity, infrastructure or headcount before the pattern itself repeats.
Reopen when
The constraint moves or performance weakens at the next scale.
Useful tool
Scale gate.
Start with the earliest material gap
Search when credible alternatives are missing. Validate when one answer is specific enough to test. Scale only after the chosen pattern has repeated without exceptional effort.
