The Wardley Map. Schematic by the author.

Are you drifting further away from your customers towards commodity?

I know just enough about the Wardley map to be dangerous. I’ve found it to be a good visualization aid helping organizations quickly see if they are fit for the future or slipping away from the customer and towards commodity.

The Wardley map invites organizations to map their capabilities against two axis:

Y-axis: indicates if different capabilities are close to the customer (e.g. a service the customer is using) or further from the customer (e.g. a database needed to offer the service, but which the customer doesn’t see).

X-axis: if different capabilities are innovative or commodity.

The purpose of a Wardley Map is to:

• Visualize the components within your value chain and their relationships
• Identify the “maturity” of each component
• Analyze and anticipate the competitive landscape
• Make informed investment decisions related to your capabilities

(e.g. are we spending a lot of time custom making something the customer doesn’t see which could be bought cheaply off the shelf?)

Wardley Map: https://medium.com/wardleymaps

I’ve found it to be an effective tool when trying to:

1. Quickly see if what we are really doing (our capabilities) are as innovative and customer centric as we claim we are (if capabilities are clustering down and to the right it indicates something else)
2. If we are serving innovative or commodity customer needs ..
3. .. and if we have the capabilities in place to discover and serve emerging customer needs
4. Identify whats’s slowing us down or driving us forward
5. Discuss if we at all fit for the future competitive landscape