Bmc Hunting Zone Definition

---
name: bmc-hunting-zone-definition
description: "Defines a one-sentence 'hunting zone' — megatrend × owned or acquirable assets × attractive customer segment — before sketching any BMC, so bottom-up business model experimentation stays bounded and comparable instead of producing scattered, unrelated one-off canvases."
---

# BMC Hunting Zone Definition

## Purpose

An unbounded "let's brainstorm new business models" session reliably
produces scattered, incomparable canvases that are hard to prioritize
against each other, because they're not actually answering the same
question. A hunting zone is a short, deliberately non-budget statement
of direction — set before any canvas work starts — that bounds where
exploration is allowed to roam without pre-deciding the specific
business model. Use this FIRST, before `bmc-session-facilitation-design`
and any canvas sketching, whenever more than one business model idea is
being explored at once.

## Anchored in research

"Hunting Zones" is a named concept from Andy Binns, Charles O'Reilly,
and Michael Tushman's work on corporate exploration (*The Corporate
Explorer* and *The Corporate Explorer Fieldbook*), independently
covered in [MIT Sloan Management
Review](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/leading-disruption-in-a-legacy-business/)
and by other innovation-practice sources. The framing bridges top-down
strategic direction and bottom-up exploration by identifying areas with
the greatest potential impact, rather than leaving either extreme
(fully prescribed roadmap, or fully unconstrained brainstorming) to
govern exploration alone. MasterCard's "kill cash" mission, independently
confirmed as CEO Ajay Banga's actual stated company direction, is used
below as the reference example of the right FORMAT for a hunting zone
statement.

## Method

1. **Identify a genuine megatrend**, not a fad — a real, durable
   direction of change in the market, technology, or regulatory
   environment relevant to the business. Test: would this direction
   still plausibly be true in five years, not just trending this
   quarter?
2. **List owned or realistically acquirable assets** that could be
   leveraged against that megatrend — brand trust, an existing customer
   base, a distribution channel, a specific capability, a dataset,
   domain expertise. Be honest about "acquirable" — a capability the
   company could realistically build or buy counts; one that would
   require becoming a fundamentally different company doesn't.
3. **Identify the most attractive segment intersection** — where the
   megatrend creates a high-value customer problem AND the company's
   listed assets give it a genuine right to play, not just a hopeful
   angle.
4. **Write the hunting zone as ONE sentence** — inspiring, memorable,
   and explicitly NOT a budget or a KPI. MasterCard's "kill cash" is the
   reference format: short, direction-setting, aimed at where to look,
   not what number to hit. A hunting zone stated as a target ("increase
   revenue from segment X by 20%") is not a hunting zone — it's already
   a goal for a specific, chosen model, which defeats the purpose of
   setting the boundary before choosing.
5. **Test the hunting zone's width before using it.** Two failure modes,
   both common:
   - **Too narrow** — the hunting zone is really just the current
     product roadmap restated in different words; it doesn't open any
     genuinely new exploration.
   - **Too wide** — the hunting zone is something like "grow the
     company" or "explore AI opportunities"; it doesn't rule anything
     out and provides no actual boundary.
   A well-set hunting zone rules some things out clearly while still
   leaving real room for more than one plausible business model inside
   it.
6. **Use the hunting zone as an active filter, not a one-time
   statement.** Before starting work on any new BMC, check explicitly
   whether the opportunity being explored actually sits inside the
   hunting zone. If it doesn't: either the hunting zone genuinely needs
   revisiting (rare — treat this as a deliberate, visible decision, not
   a quiet exception), or the opportunity should be parked and tracked
   separately, not casually folded in alongside in-zone work (the common
   failure mode this step exists to prevent).
7. **Scale the process to the company, not the framework's origin.**
   This concept originates in large-company corporate exploration
   practice, but at this pack's actual client scale (early-stage and
   growth-stage companies, founder closely involved) it doesn't need a
   governance committee — a single founder or small leadership team can
   set the hunting zone in one sitting. What matters is that it's
   written down, stated to the team, and actually referenced when new
   ideas come up — an unwritten or unreferenced hunting zone has no
   real effect regardless of company size.

## What this skill does NOT do

- Doesn't choose the specific business model — it only bounds where
  exploration is allowed to look; `bmc-innovation-pattern-matching` and
  canvas work still do the actual model design inside the zone.
- Doesn't replace a full strategic planning process for a company that
  genuinely needs one — this is a lightweight framing tool for bounding
  BMC exploration specifically, not a substitute for strategy work at a
  larger scale.
- Doesn't stay valid forever — a hunting zone that was right eighteen
  months ago may no longer match the megatrend or the company's actual
  assets; revisit it deliberately rather than letting it go stale
  silently.

## Refinement notes

- What's a real hunting zone statement you've helped a client set — and
  did it hold up, or need revisiting sooner than expected?
- Which failure mode (too narrow, too wide) do you see more often with
  early-stage founders specifically?
- How do you handle it when a genuinely promising opportunity falls
  outside the stated hunting zone — how often does the zone actually get
  revisited versus the opportunity getting parked?

## Continue from here

- Use first: before `bmc-session-facilitation-design/SKILL.md` and any
  canvas sketching, whenever multiple models are being explored.
- Feeds into: `bmc-innovation-pattern-matching/SKILL.md` — the pattern
  search happens inside the hunting zone this skill defines.
- This pack's shared guardrails: `../../CLAUDE.md`

## References

- `../../references/bmc-source-material-notes.md` — source material background
- `../../references/bmc-resilience-heuristics-research.md` — selection and grounding notes for this skill and its siblings
- `../../CLAUDE.md` — this pack's shared guardrails