How a Global Manufacturer Identified and Entered a New Growth Market

The case at a glance

Close to 90% of our client's revenue depended on a single industry: filtration for transportation and industry, at a time when battery electric, hydrogen, hybrid and combustion drivetrains all looked plausible.

In a first phase, Bluemorrow used foresight-driven strategy to test whether diversification would pay off across every plausible future of the core business.

In the second, we narrowed the indoor air quality market down to 11 priorities.

The result is a second growth engine outside transportation: the new Intelligent Air Solutions division already generates around 10% of group revenue, and management is targeting 25%.

Challenge

For more than 80 years, our client built a dominant position in filtration: oil, fuel and cabin air filters for cars, trucks, trains and heavy equipment. More than €4 billion in revenue, over 20,000 people, operations in more than 25 countries.

Then the transportation industry began to shift in several directions at once. Battery electric, hydrogen, hybrids and next generation combustion engines were all plausible. OEM supply chains were being renegotiated. Digital entrants were circling the aftermarket.

Management had already made a first move: an acquisition in European HVAC filtration. A signal of intent. But a signal is not a strategy.

Which opportunities in indoor air deserved investment, in what order, and built how?

Approach

Two phases, each building on the last. First, we translated deep uncertainty about the future of transportation into a clear strategic imperative. Then we turned that imperative into a ranked portfolio of concrete opportunities, each with a development path.

We stopped asking which future would win.

54 leadership interviews. 281 influencing factors, condensed to 10 key drivers of change. 153 projections, tested in 578 consistency checks. The result was 3 plausible futures for transportation, each weighted by the client's own leadership:

• Steady Change, 58%: combustion stays dominant, change is gradual
• Green Transformation, 28%: rapid electrification, supply chains redrawn
• One Step Back, 14%: protectionism, alternative drivetrains stall

Standing still was the riskier bet. The critical insight was not which scenario was most likely. It was what the distribution revealed: leadership itself put a 42% probability on the 2 disruptive futures. In both, a transportation-heavy revenue base faces structural headwinds.

Three strategy variants were stress tested against all 3 futures. One move created value in every one of them: entering new filtration markets. Diversification stopped being a matter of ambition. It became the analytically safe choice.

The full case shows all 3 strategy variants, the robustness ratings and the 10 further recommendations.

From 77 ideas to 11 bets.

With the imperative set, the next question was sharper: where exactly in indoor air and intelligent air solutions should the company play, and how?

We built an Opportunity Radar across 5 search fields, from Comfort & Wellbeing to Regulated Air Quality. Expert interviews on 3 continents surfaced 45 opportunities. Patent databases, academic journals and industry conferences added 32 more.

77 raw ideas → 70 opportunities → 26 deep dives → 11 priorities with roadmaps

The full case includes the complete radar, the assessment criteria and how each of the 11 was assigned a development path: acquire, partner or build.

The radar also said no. It flagged one of the client's ongoing initiatives for retraction. For management, that was a sign the process judged existing work by the same criteria as new ideas.

Which initiative, and why, is in the full case.

GET the full case.

13 pages. What's inside:

• How 281 factors became 3 scenarios, step by step
• The robustness logic that made diversification a safe bet
• The full Opportunity Radar across 5 search fields
• The Strategic Fit and Addressability portfolios
• The 3 blockers and how they were resolved