Four stages. Six steps. A clear decision each time.
International expansion can look straightforward from the home market.
The product may travel. The cut-through in the new market, the commercial model, the leadership capacity and the operating assumptions may not. DunDrake tests all four, in six steps, before the company commits capital and management attention to finding out the hard way. Each of the six steps has a named output, and each can be bought on its own or taken as a whole package.
Six questions. One clear decision.
You know your business. An expansion asks questions it may never have been asked before. Each report tackles a key question, and each report can be bought on its own.
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Included
What are we actually trying to achieve?
What the critical decisions are likely to be, and where your plan is most likely to come under pressure.
Example“This is how we understand your business. Correct us.”
How it works
- Output
- 2 to 3 page diagnosis, played back to you before any other work starts
- Your time
- About 30 minutes for the CEO or expansion lead
- Grounded in
- Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy
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from £4,500
Does the commercial case survive contact with the market?
Which two or three assumptions decide the answer, and whether going now beats going later.
Example“The case turns on time to first contract. Settle that and the decision settles with it.”
How it works
- Output
- 6 to 10 page report, built on ranges and comparable entries, indicative cost to go now vs. wait
- Readout
- 60 to 90 minutes with the CEO and CFO
- Your time
- Your plan in any format, then one 45 minute call with your CFO
- Grounded in
- Ghemawat (CAGE distance); Flyvbjerg and Kahneman (the outside view)
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Where most clients start£4,250
Does your leadership team actually believe it?
Where your executives privately agree, where they diverge, and what must be resolved before you commit.
Example“Four of six executives privately believe the revenue target is unrealistic.”
How it works
- Output
- 6 to 10 page report led by the divergence chart. No answer is attributed to a named person.
- Readout
- 90 minutes with your leadership team
- Your time
- Five to eight executives, about 30 minutes each, over ten working days
- Grounded in
- Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein, Noise; Klein (pre-mortem)
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from £4,500
Can the organisation deliver the plan you have written?
Your plan, set against what the people delivering it believe is achievable.
Example“Your plan says first local hire in month two. Your People Team says month five.”
How it works
- Output
- 2 to 4 page written plan versus responses, with the gaps to close in the first 30 and 90 days, each with an owner
- Readout
- With workstream owners, then with leadership
- Your time
- Your roll-out plan, or a 45 minute conversation, then a short survey for each owner
- Grounded in
- Nadler and Tushman (congruence model)
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from £4,500
Who decides what, and how will you know if you are off course?
Clear ownership settled before the first difficult moment, and the few numbers that show whether it is working.
Example“Three decisions the board must own. Five numbers reviewed every month.”
How it works
- Output
- Decision rights, board triggers and a monthly, quarterly and annual rhythm, tested in one working session
- Your time
- Short interviews with the CEO and chair
- Grounded in
- Rogers and Blenko (RAPID); Grove, High Output Management
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from £4,500
Go now, go with conditions, wait, or rethink?
An independent decision paper: the evidence for proceeding, the case against, any dissent, and the conditions to meet.
Example“Cleared with conditions. Three conditions, each with an owner and a date.”
How it works
- Output
- 4 to 8 page memo with a verdict on each step and one overall
- Readout
- Presented to your board or executive team
- Your time
- One interview with the CEO
- Grounded in
- Minto (answer first); Kahneman, Lovallo and Sibony (pre-decision checklist)
Cleared with conditions
Hold position
Grounded
Prices are fixed. You see them before you start.
Published upfront
The Expansion Alignment Report is £4,250. Every other report starts from £4,500. Most expansions sit at the published price.
What makes the work larger
One quote, once
Where complexity materially changes the work, we confirm one fixed fee for everything that remains, before you commit. No repricing after that.
Paid the same whatever the verdict. Our fee never depends on whether you go.
Prices are for businesses, shown in pounds sterling, and exclude VAT and any other local taxes.
All six questions, in order.
From framing the ambition to an independent decision and a named launch plan. Each answer feeds the next, so the whole route costs less than buying the reports one by one.
The questions behind the stages.
Is the case real?
Why this market, why now, and what would have to be true for the move to make sense?
- The commercial rationale, tested against the alternative of not moving
- The window: why this market, and why this year specifically
- What would have to be true for the case to hold
Will the economics travel?
Will the business model travel, not only the product? Which assumptions must be tested first?
- Pricing, margin and unit economics, tested against the new market rather than assumed
- The few assumptions that actually decide the answer, separated from the rest
- What gets tested first, before anything else is committed
Is the ownership real?
Who genuinely owns the move? Is the team aligned on the tested case, not just the ambition?
- A named, accountable owner for the decision
- Where the leadership team's answers actually diverge, tested individually before the room agrees out loud
- Whether the alignment is real, or simply unchallenged
Can the business carry it?
Is the move budgeted, sequenced and governed, with clear gates, decision rights and accountability?
- The plan, sequenced and gated rather than treated as one commitment
- Decision rights: who can stop the move, and on what evidence
- Capacity: whether the business can carry this while running everything else
Is the decision made, and owned?
Has leadership taken a clear position, with the conditions, any dissent and the accountable owner on record?
- One of four positions, stated plainly: cleared, cleared with conditions, hold or grounded
- The conditions still to be met, and who confirms they have been met
- A launch plan that turns the decision into named first moves
The decision that follows
Four positions, each with the rationale, the conditions, any dissent and the accountable owner made explicit.
Every report you buy ends in one of them.
Cleared for take-off
Proceed. The case holds.
Cleared with conditions
Proceed, once the named conditions are met.
Hold position
Strengthen the case before you move.
Grounded
Reassess the fundamentals before this goes further.
Four books behind the four stages.
SCaLE draws on four bodies of thinking. None of the authors wrote about international expansion as a discipline in itself. Between them, they explain most of why it succeeds or fails.
Richard Rumelt
Strategy starts with an honest diagnosis of the challenge, then a guiding policy and coherent action. That is the test behind our first question: why this market, really?
Pankaj Ghemawat
The world is less connected than leaders assume. Cultural, administrative, geographic and economic distance explain why a model that works at home can still fail to travel.
Daniel Kahneman
Capable, experienced leaders are still predictably optimistic about time, cost and risk. Challenge has to be built into the room, so we build it in.
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Execution is a discipline in its own right, where people, strategy and operations meet. We test whether the business can carry the plan before it is asked to.
- Rumelt, R. (2011) Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. London: Profile Books.
- Ghemawat, P. (2018) Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter, with a new preface. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
- Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Allen Lane.
- Bossidy, L. and Charan, R. (2011) Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, revised edition. London: Random House Business Books.
Four rules, applied every time.
Say it straight.
We tell you what we see, including when the honest answer is that this should not happen yet.
Your success is the only headline.
We do not need credit, a logo on your slide or a mention in the story. If it works, it is yours.
Evidence before belief.
We look for reasons not to believe before reasons to believe, and every barrier we name comes with a route past it.
Open hands.
When you need people for what comes next, we show you the best options, and none of them pay us.