4.1 Four Corners Analysis Case Study

Case Study

Ahmed is an entrepreneur who wants to start a new business by creating a travel mobile app that offers customized travel services starting from choosing the destination to the way back. A major problem that Ahmed knows he might face is the fierce competition in the field and the rapid change in the industry. Therefore, he had to conduct the four corners analysis for his direct competitor “Google Trips” to be one step ahead of the competition.

Ahmed began with analyzing the motivation of Google trips as a business. He wanted to know what drives the company to sustain such a business and how they perceive their business. Ahmed started to search for information about the application and to dig deep to know their drivers and management assumptions. He came up with the following:

Then, Ahmed moved to the possible actions that Google Trips might take in the future based on their current strategy and their capabilities. Further, he summed the info in the following: 

Lastly, Ahmed grouped all his assumptions that he wrote in the four corners analysis. Then, he assumed the following:

• The company is customer-oriented.
• The company has a long-term strategy which is innovation for the best experience.
• The company is willing to invest a huge amount of money to develop its business.
• The company has the calibers to help in its innovation stage.

After looking at these facts, Ahmed realized that he will be facing a fierce competition against a big player. He must be very cautious while entering the market because of the strengths of his competitors. Yet, he must always keep an eye on the features that are required by customers and introduce them to the market faster than his competitors.

Pros and Cons 

The four corners tool is very insightful in terms of the future decisions and tactics of an entity. It helps formulate a strategy for the business rather than looking at a snapshot of the company like the SWOT analysis. Nevertheless, as mentioned before it is not widely used and therefore, a lot of people do not know about it.