Adjacent Moves Use Case - Patterns of Digital Strategy using Wardley Maps

Digital hasn’t just accelerated markets — it has blurred their boundaries. Competitors no longer come from your category; they come from the outer edges.

In this next session of our year-long strategy series, we unpack one of the patterns at the core of unexpected disruption: Adjacent Moves.

This is the play where newcomers enter from a neighbouring space with a product that looks harmless… until it quietly becomes the centre of gravity.
It’s how the iPod dethroned the Walkman.
How smartphones have consumed the entire mobile market.
How Tesla continues to exapt innovations from energy storage, software, and automotive engineering to rewrite what a “car company” even is.

Adjacent moves don’t feel dangerous — until they’re terminal. And most incumbents miss the threat because they’re sitting comfortably in their known "Red Ocean" (reference to Red Ocean strategies).

Using Wardley Maps (no prior experience needed), we’ll:

• Break down the Adjacent Move pattern and why disruption so often emerges from outside the category
• Explore historical and modern cases where diffusion from adjacent markets reshaped entire industries
• Explore weak signal detection techniques
• Reveal how exaptation can accelerate the realisation of disruptive strategies
• Help you assess which adjacencies threaten your organisation… and which ones you could exploit before others do

Expect a hands-on, high-clarity session with live mapping, practical examples, and a strategy lens tuned to real-world competitive dynamics — not wishful thinking.

You’ll walk away with:

• A precise understanding of Adjacent Moves and how they trigger category-level disruption
• Insight into how diffusion and exaptation create strategic leverage
• A map of your own exposure to adjacent threats, weak signals to watch, and potential adjacent opportunities
• Greater confidence in using Wardley Maps to navigate markets where boundaries no longer hold

This is the next chapter in our strategy series, which continues with sessions on intelligence advantage (data & AI), utility-scale consolidation, and more. Upcoming dates will be announced soon.