The method, made playable.
Start with the pre-assessment for a read on your whole proposition, then dig into the single-block tools below. No sign-up, nothing saved, just the ideas in your hands.
A pre-assessment, before the tools.
Each toy further down sharpens a single block. This one reads your whole value proposition at a glance, shows where it is thin, and opens into the full, in-depth assessment.
Pre-assessment · 60 seconds
Where does your value proposition stand?
Value proposition design is not one decision. Rate eight building blocks honestly and get a quick read, then take the full assessment to go deep on each.
Rate all eight blocks to see your readiness and where to start.
Source · The Value Proposition Assessment · Hoang Huynh, Value Strategy
The Formula, as a discipline
Set how many channels, values, promises and USPs you carry, and read whether you are focused or trying to be everything to everyone.
Interactive · The Formula as a discipline
one promise per channel · two channels at most
2 promises · 2 channels: one per channel
Textbook discipline
One promise per channel: clean, and exactly the norm.
This is the shape the method aims for. Trader Joe's runs one voice, one kind of store, a tight private-label value set and almost no advertising, and earns devotion rather than mere reach.
Source · The Value Proposition Formula · Hoang Huynh, Value Strategy
The 3P Contract Diagnostic
The thirty-second test. Are you irrelevant, weak, or simply not trusted?
Interactive · The 30-second diagnostic
A contract with three clauses. Miss one, and it names how you fail.
You are irrelevant, weak and not trusted. Every broken value proposition fails in at least one of these three ways. Naming which is the fastest diagnosis in the book.
Source · The 3P Framework · Hoang Huynh, Value Strategy
Which Ocean? Detector
Six questions to read whether you are in a red, blue, or new ocean, and which arsenal you need.
Interactive · Which ocean?
0/6
1. When you lose a customer, where do they go?
2. Does the customer know how to evaluate you?
3. Is there already a budget line for what you sell?
4. How much explaining do you have to do?
5. Who names your category?
6. What is your price compared against?
Answer all six to read your ocean. Remember the most dangerous sentence in business: we have no real competitors.
Source · The Three Oceans · Hoang Huynh, extending Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne)
The Promise Builder
Assemble a promise from its five ingredients: clause, object, recipient, enforcer, conditions.
Interactive · Anatomy of a promise
The trigger. The IF that switches the promise on.
The thing itself. What you actually do.
The target, not the whole market. Who it is truly for.
The distinctive adjective, self-reflected, never comparative.
The perimeter of fulfilment. A declaration and a boundary at once.
Your promise · 0/5 ingredients
A true contract, ingredient by ingredient…
Source · Anatomy of a Promise · Hoang Huynh, Value Strategy
The Value Stick
Widen the whole stick by raising willingness to pay, then decide who keeps the delight.
Interactive · The Value Stick
Value created is the whole stick. Price only decides who keeps which part of it.
Raised by the value proposition: what the customer would gladly pay.
Your capture. Sits between cost and WTP.
Lowered by suppliers and operations, never the goal on its own.
Cost reduction can never be the objective on its own: it is cutting off your legs to weigh less. The strategist's work is to widen the whole stick by raising willingness to pay, then decide, deliberately, how much delight to leave on the customer's side of the line.
Source · The Value Stick · after Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Harvard Business School
The Rhyme Check
Test a portfolio move: does it echo what you already own and set up the next echo, or is it just noise?
Interactive · The rhyme check
Every addition to the portfolio should echo something already there in a new register, and set up the next echo. Run the check on a move you are considering.
The pattern (the value) it repeats in a new register.
The next echo it prepares. A rhyme points forward too.
How is the value generated?
Fill the two rhyme questions to run the check…
Source · Rhyming Framework · Hoang Huynh, Value Strategy (Phase 6, Horizon)
Wins, losses, and autopsies: every case a framework in the wild.
The canonical value-led win: USP near nil, audience block devastating.
All four factors switched on at once, a category built without traditional advertising.
One proposition read under seven different lenses of the method.
A textbook new-ocean attempt: the category was named, but the market did not enter.
The recurring negative case: a 97.5% collapse when the promise lost its proof.
The autopsies: what happens when the frame changes and you improve inside the old one.
The author's own studio, dissected with its own tools. A method that refuses to be applied to itself is not a method.
A value proposition where the stance itself is the differentiator.