Explain the four basic questions used to discover new-market space outlined in the Four Actions

Framework.

What will be an ideal response?

The key to discovering a new-market space lies in asking four basic questions. These questions are illustrated in
the Four Actions Framework. By answering these questions, managers are able to define a new value curve for an
industry or at least, a segment of an industry. First, what product or service attributes that rivals take for granted
should be reduced well below the industry standard? Second, what factors that the industry has taken for granted
should be eliminated? Third, what product or service attributes should be raised well above the industry standard?
And fourth, are there any factors that the industry has never offered that should be created? By finding answers to
these questions, managers could modify a firm's strategy either so that its products are further differentiated from
competitors', so that its cost structure is driven significantly below that of competitors, or, conceivably, both. In
addition, by following this path, firms often generate new customers; they grow the business by means other than
stealing customers from competitors. As a result of using the value-curve tool, firms can develop strategies that
challenge and change the rules of competition.