Addressing New Market Opportunities For An Aerospace Organisation Through Action Learning - Case Study

A major Aerospace company supplying sub-systems to the major aircraft manufacturers was unsure how best to address the emerging market for Uninhabited Air Vehicles (UAVs). The UAV market appeared to present a source of growth and a way of offsetting potential loss of business in manned air vehicles, if and when UAVs displaced manned vehicles in military and civilian uses.

We supported an internal study team that were tasked by the CEO to determine if and how the company should enter the UAV market. Our first task was to assemble and distil the team’s knowledge of the UAV market. This enabled us to set out a hypothesis built on four premises:

1. The UAV ‘market’ was both attractive (i.e. large, important, growing and potentially profitable) and accessible (i.e. market was open, competitors did not dominate, the company had points of entry/ connections).

2. A number of significant and sustainable leadership positions were available to the company.

3. The company did not, at the time, have the necessary competencies, technologies and/or infrastructure to capture these positions but could obtain them through specific acquisitions, alliances or joint ventures and combine them with existing expertise and technologies.

4. The implementation of the market entry strategy lay within the capabilities, resources and time-scales of the company.

Working with the team, we drew on a wide range of analytical frameworks and concepts to guide the primary and secondary research, and to structure the analyses. Concepts from disciplines such as strategy, innovation, alliances and acquisitions, and programme management were reviewed with the team then applied to the market entry project.

Within a few weeks, the team presented its recommendations to the CEO, who was very impressed given the team’s relative inexperience, the short time period and in the context of such a fragmented and embryonic market. In line with the team’s recommendations, the CEO set up a review group to conduct more detailed analysis with a view to entering the market through an acquisition.