Market Guide: Defining and Identifying Emerging Capability Markets

A Strategic Imperative for Product Executives (May 2025)

Table of Contents

This isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s 12,000 words of research. Enjoy!

• Executive Overview

  • Top 10 Key Insights

• Introduction

  • The Imperative of Anticipating Tomorrow: Identifying Emerging Capabilities in a Dynamic May 2025 Landscape

  • Beyond the Horizon: Limitations of Traditional Market Analysis for Nascent Opportunities

  • A Strategic Compass: Introducing the Market Guide to Defining and Discovering Emerging Capabilities

• Chapter 1: Defining "Emerging Capability Markets"

  • Anatomy of Emergence: Core Characteristics and Dynamics

  • The Capability Frontier: Distinguishing from Established and Mature Markets

  • A Taxonomy of Innovation: Categorizing Emerging Capabilities

  • From Niche to Norm: Historical Examples of Capabilities Gone Mainstream

• Chapter 2: The Differentiated Lens: Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) for Discovery

  • Uncovering True North: A Deep Dive into Jobs-to-be-Done Theory (Christensen, Ulwick, et al.)

  • Why JTBD Unlocks Emerging Opportunities: Focusing on Needs, Not Just Solutions

  • The JTBD Toolkit: Practical Methodologies for Uncovering Customer "Jobs"

  • JTBD in Action: Case Studies of Successful Market Space Identification

• Chapter 3: A Practical Guide to Identifying Emerging Capabilities using JTBD

  • The Product Executive's Playbook: A Step-by-Step Implementation Process

  • Reading the Tea Leaves: Key Signals and Indicators of Emerging Capabilities

  • The Innovator's Dashboard: Essential Data Sources to Monitor

• Chapter 4: Evaluating and Prioritizing Emerging Capabilities

  • The Emerging Opportunity Assessment Framework

  • Navigating Uncertainty: A Pragmatic Approach to Risk Assessment

  • The Product Executive's Prioritization Toolkit

• Chapter 5: Integrating Insights into Product Strategy

  • From Insight to Impact: Translating Capabilities into Product Vision and Roadmap Elements

  • Securing Buy-in: Building a Compelling Business Case for Emerging Capability Investment

  • De-risking Innovation: Strategies for Lean Experimentation and Phased Investment

  • Cultivating the Future: Building an Organizational Culture of Exploratory Innovation

• Conclusion & Actionable Recommendations

  • The Path Forward: Reinforcing the Value of a JTBD-Driven Approach

  • Your First 90 Days: Actionable Recommendations for Product Executives

  • The Evolving Horizon: Future Outlook on Capability Emergence (as of late 2025 and beyond)

Executive Overview

In the rapidly evolving technological and business landscape of May 2025, Product Executives face the critical challenge of identifying and capitalizing on emerging capability markets to drive sustainable growth and innovation. Traditional market analysis methods often prove insufficient for these nascent opportunities, which are characterized by high uncertainty and a lack of historical data. This guide presents a systematic, needs-driven approach, centered on the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, as an essential compass for navigating this uncertainty. By focusing on understanding and addressing previously unmet or poorly met customer needs, Product Executives can unlock significant future growth. This report offers a robust framework and actionable insights to define, identify, evaluate, and prioritize emerging capabilities, thereby enabling informed strategic decisions in product development and innovation. The primary challenge addressed is not merely the discovery of new technologies, but the crucial connection of these technologies to genuine, often latent, market needs that signal the formation of a true "capability market." This requires a fundamental shift from a technology-first to a problem-centric or job-centric mindset when scouting for future opportunities.

Top 10 Key Insights

1. Needs Precede Markets: Emerging Capability Markets are fundamentally defined by unmet or poorly served customer Jobs-to-be-Done, not solely by the advent of new technology.

2. JTBD: The Superior Lens: The Jobs-to-be-Done framework offers a more robust and insightful lens than traditional market analysis for identifying truly nascent opportunities because it focuses on stable underlying needs.

3. The Gold in Gaps: "Non-consumption" (where no solution is used) and "under-served jobs" (where current solutions are inadequate) are prime indicators and rich sources for emerging capability discovery.

4. Signal Triangulation is Key: Systematically monitoring and triangulating diverse signals—such as novel patent filings, venture capital flows, academic research, and early startup activity—is crucial for validating potential capability markets.

5. Value-Centric Sizing: Early market sizing for emerging capabilities must pivot from traditional TAM/SAM/SOM based on existing products to estimating the value of the customer job being solved more effectively or efficiently.

6. Strategic Alignment Over Speculation: When prioritizing investments in uncertain new capabilities, alignment with core company strategy, mission, and existing strengths is paramount, often outweighing speculative market size.

7. Holistic Risk Assessment: Risk in emerging capabilities is multifaceted, encompassing technological feasibility, market adoption, execution capability, and ecosystem dependencies; it demands a comprehensive evaluation.

8. Learn, De-Risk, Invest: Lean experimentation and phased investment, focused on rapid learning and de-risking key assumptions, are the most effective strategies for navigating the inherent uncertainty of emerging capabilities.

9. Culture Catalyzes Capability: An organizational culture that actively fosters curiosity, tolerates intelligent failure, and champions exploration is as vital to success as the analytical frameworks themselves.

10. The AI & Personalization Wave (May 2025): As of May 2025, capabilities driven by advanced Artificial Intelligence, particularly those enabling hyper-personalization and addressing complex systemic jobs, continue to be powerful forces in redefining market emergence.

Introduction