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Avascent Releases White Paper on Adjacent Market Growth

The Avascent Group, Washington, DC's leading strategy and management consulting firm, has released its latest white paper covering growth in new markets. "Growing When Growth is Hard -- Finding New Opportunities in an Uncertain Market" builds off of Avascent's recent presentation at the Wharton Aerospace Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Each piece of analysis is aimed at helping businesses plan for and achieve growth in difficult budget and economic environments.

"At the Board, C levels, and across business development and corporate development functions, firms are looking to identify new growth opportunities in times of budget and macro economic uncertainty," said Jon Barney, Principal at Avascent and co-author of the two documents.

Avascent's reports note that key questions persist concerning how to approach new and adjacent markets such as cyber, energy, health IT, and smart power among many others.

"Firms tend to struggle with whether to focus on core products and services or diversify as a means to expand their portfolio," said Tim Garnett, a Partner at Avascent and co-presenter of "Adjacent Market Strategy Development & Execution" at the Wharton Aerospace Conference. "Further, there need to be considerations given to organic growth through acquisition, near- to mid-term shareholder impact of any major plays in a new market, and response to competitors' strategies as well."

Avascent's presentation at Wharton highlighted that diversification into attractive adjacent markets provides an opportunity for traditional aerospace & defense firms to offset potential declines in their core business in the face of defense spending reductions and/or declines in the highly cyclical commercial aerospace market.

"Adjacent markets are a viable strategy for firms enduring these sorts of challenges. Often, the best path to success is by way of 'short commutes' through core capabilities (technology, product, culture) and customers," said Barney.

"Growing When Growth is Hard" focuses on these types of tactics and outlines specific case studies for how firms have successfully grown in times of uncertainty. Avascent highlights three specific acquisition strategies in the report: 1) acquire to expand; 2) acquire to consolidate; and 3) acquire to focus and reposition.

Mark Shields, a Partner at Avascent and co-author, noted that "companies that have grown successfully in spite of challenging economic environments inevitably have clear, deliberate strategies and strong execution skills. Small differences in clarity of purpose yield wide differences in final result."

About The Avascent Group

The Avascent Group (www.avascent.com) is the leading management consulting firm specializing in serving senior executives in the defense, aerospace, homeland security, logistics, technical services and infrastructure sectors. Avascent provides a full range of management consulting services, from strategic planning to market analysis to organizational and operational improvement.