Alex MH Smith Strategy Stack Blueprint

Last updated: 13 July 2026

Build a complete, differentiated business strategy from scratch — covering what you uniquely offer, how you deliver it, how to sell it to customers, and how to rally your team and industry behind it.

// TL;DR

The Alex MH Smith Strategy Stack Blueprint is a step-by-step framework for building a complete, differentiated business strategy from scratch. It stacks four components in order: New Value and Key Innovation (what you DO), plus Customer Story and Company Story (what you SAY). Each layer depends on the one beneath it. Use it when launching a new venture, repositioning an existing business, or diagnosing why a business feels generic and can't stand out. It's also ideal when you have a strong offer but can't articulate it clearly to customers, staff, or investors.

Framework

// When should you use the Strategy Stack Blueprint?

Use this skill whenever a business needs to define or sharpen its strategy from the ground up — whether launching a new venture, repositioning an existing business, or diagnosing why a business feels generic and is struggling to stand out. Also use it when a business has a solid offer but cannot articulate it clearly to customers, staff, or investors.

// What do you need before building your Strategy Stack?

Business descriptionrequired
What the business does, what it sells, and the industry or category it operates in.
Founder background / originrequired
How the founder came to start this business — personal history, frustrations, observations, or accidents that led here.
Current differentiators (if any)
Any ways the business already behaves differently from competitors, even unintentionally.
Target customerrequired
Who the business primarily serves.
Known competitors
Key players in the same category — used to identify gaps and industry flaws.

// What are the core principles behind the Strategy Stack?

The Strategy Stack

Strategy is not one monolithic thing — it is a collection of necessary components stacked in order. The stack splits into two sections: what you DO (New Value + Key Innovation) and what you SAY (Customer Story + Company Story). Every component depends on the one beneath it.

New Value

Every business exists only to bring new, innovative value to the market. If the world would be fine without your business, it shouldn't exist. New Value is the foundation of the entire stack — all other components serve it and cannot be built without it.

Increase Demand, Lower Supply

The purpose of strategy is to do two things simultaneously: increase demand for what you sell while making sure customers can only get it from you. This combination is what creates genuine market leverage and skyrocketing profits.

The 3 Ds

Three mental models for generating breakthrough New Value: Disagreement (your contrarian take on the industry), Difference (accidental or existing ways your business already diverges from competitors), and Duplication (copying a form of value from a completely unrelated industry and transplanting it into yours).

Key Innovation

New Value requires New Action — you cannot just claim differentiation, you must do something genuinely different to produce it. An Innovation must be specific, tangible, creative, and directly generative of the New Value. Vague platitudes like 'excellent service' do not qualify.

Nine Types of Innovation

Innovation is not limited to product features. There are nine types: Product Features, Production Method, Routes to Market, Service Bundling, Branding (only if taken to an extreme), Targeting, Customer Experience, Pricing, and Culture. Recognising all nine dramatically expands what counts as a valid innovation.

Customer Story

Your strategy is not your message. The Customer Story is a translation job — it converts the internal strategy logic into a narrative framed entirely from the customer's perspective, using the structure: 'You know how [problem]... well we [key innovation]... so you [dream end state].' The customer is James Bond; your company is Q.

Company Story

The Company Story communicates the strategy to everyone who is not a customer — team, investors, partners, press, and yourself. It is an inspiring narrative that makes people want to join and push the mission forward. A great Company Story can make even a mediocre strategy succeed; a weak one can kill a great strategy.

// How do you build a Strategy Stack step by step?

1
Identify your New Value using the 3 Ds
Work through all three lenses in order. DISAGREEMENT: What does the founder genuinely believe that no one else in the industry believes? What frustrates them about the status quo? What is their contrarian view? Trace that disagreement to a form of customer value it could create. DIFFERENCE: What does the business already do differently from competitors — especially accidentally or without intention? Take an outsider's perspective and look for 'weirdness' that has emerged organically. Ask what customer value that difference could provide. DUPLICATION: What forms of value exist in completely unrelated industries or product categories that do not yet exist in this one? Lift the concept, overlay it onto the business, and explore what it would look like. Use any or all three — the goal is one clear, articulated New Value that the market genuinely lacks.
2
Validate that the New Value is genuinely new
Ask: would the world be fine without this? Is this doubling, tripling, or quadrupling what competitors already do — or is it truly additive? If competitors already offer it, the New Value is not new enough. Iterate on the 3 Ds until you have something the market has not seen.
3
Identify the Key Innovation(s) that deliver the New Value
For each New Value identified, ask: what specific, tangible action makes this real? Scan all nine innovation types — Product Features, Production Method, Routes to Market, Service Bundling, Branding, Targeting, Customer Experience, Pricing, Culture — and find the one(s) that directly generate the New Value. The innovation must be something you can point to concretely, not a vague aspiration. If using Difference as your 3D, the innovation may already be implicit in the difference you identified.
4
Run the 'We Are the Only' test
Confirm the doing-half of the stack is solid by completing this sentence: 'We are the only [category] that does [Key Innovation] so that customers get [New Value].' If you cannot complete it clearly and credibly, the New Value or Innovation needs further refinement.
5
Build the Customer Story
Step 5a: List all the problems that exist for the customer in the ABSENCE of your New Value. Step 5b: Select one primary problem — the broadest, most widely applicable one. Choose it by the combination of PAIN (how severe) and SCALE (how common). Step 5c: Frame it in language the customer would naturally use. Step 5d: Complete the three-part narrative structure — 'You know how [primary customer problem stated in customer language]... well we [Key Innovation stated plainly]... so you [dream end state after buying].' The ratio is deliberate: two parts about the customer, one part about you. This structure becomes the underlying logic for all sales copy, website content, ads, pitch decks, and social content — everything else is a variant of this.
6
Build the Company Story
Work through the six-part structure in sequence: (1) ORIGIN — where did the founder come from, why did they start this, what provides humanity and colour? (2) PROBLEM NOTICED — what is fundamentally broken or flawed about the industry itself (not just the customer's problem)? This is the gap your competitors' flaws have left open. (3) UNIQUE BELIEF — what is the founder's original, contrarian insight about how to address that flaw? This is the spark that everything hinges on — connect it back to the 3Ds work from Step 1. (4) WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO — explain the Key Innovation as the inevitable action that flows from the unique belief. (5) WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CUSTOMERS — state the New Value; this is the commercial proof that the strategy will work. (6) WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE WORLD — take a flight of fancy: if this succeeds entirely, how does the world, the market, or society change? This is the purpose layer. The Company Story should read like an adventure, not a corporate mission statement.
7
Stress-test the full Strategy Stack for coherence
The New Value should run like a red thread through every layer. Check: Does the Key Innovation directly and obviously produce the New Value? Does the Customer Story translate the New Value into customer-language problems and outcomes? Does the Company Story's Unique Belief and Inevitable Action align with the Innovation and New Value? If any layer contradicts or feels disconnected from the layers below it, revise upward from the New Value.

// What does the Strategy Stack look like in real businesses?

A cosmetics brand entering a crowded market dominated by large incumbents, looking for a way to stand out beyond packaging and price.

Using DUPLICATION from the 3 Ds: the founder looks outside the cosmetics category to the fresh produce industry and identifies 'freshness' as a form of value highly meaningful to consumers buying fruit and vegetables — but entirely absent in cosmetics. The New Value becomes: fresh, natural ingredients you can trust. The Key Innovation (Production Method + Customer Experience) involves genuinely fresh product batches and in-store merchandising that replicates fruit-stand aesthetics — chalkboards, colourful displays, visible ingredients. The Customer Story: 'You know how most cosmetics are full of preservatives and you have no idea what you're actually putting on your skin... well we make cosmetics the same way a fresh market makes food... so you finally know exactly what you're using and can feel good about it.' The Company Story traces the founder's frustration with ingredient opacity in the industry, their belief that freshness is the missing standard, and a vision of a world where what goes on your body is as transparent as what goes in it.

A B2B software consultancy that claims its differentiator is 'excellent client service' but has no concrete proof points and is losing pitches to cheaper competitors.

The claim of excellent service fails the Key Innovation test — it is a vague platitude with no tangible action behind it. Using DIFFERENCE from the 3 Ds, the consultant audits what the firm actually does differently without having planned to: e.g. clients always speak to the same named consultant (no handoffs), issues are resolved in a single call, and the firm proactively flags problems before clients notice. The New Value is reframed: total accountability and zero client anxiety. The Key Innovation (Customer Experience + Production Method) is formalised as a named 'single point of contact' model with a documented escalation guarantee. The 'We are the only' test: 'We are the only software consultancy that assigns one accountable consultant end-to-end so that clients never chase, repeat themselves, or get a surprise.' The Customer Story: 'You know how working with consultants usually means constant handoffs and being the one who has to keep track of everything... well we assign one person who owns your project entirely... so you can get on with running your business instead of managing us.'

A solo founder building a professional education business in a field they entered without formal qualifications, competing against established credentialed institutions.

Using DISAGREEMENT from the 3 Ds: the founder genuinely believes the established educational model in their field is bloated, jargon-heavy, and optimised for academic credibility rather than practical results. The New Value is: strategy that works in the real world, not in a boardroom. The Key Innovation (Production Method + Targeting) is a radically simplified curriculum that identifies the 20% of principles driving 80% of results, delivered without academic framing, aimed at practitioners rather than MBA students. The Company Story leans into the founder's lack of credentials as the ORIGIN — the outsider perspective is the Unique Belief, not a liability. The What This Means for the World layer: a future where businesses of any size can access strategy thinking that actually changes outcomes, not just produces decks.

// What mistakes should you avoid when building your strategy?

Building on New Value that is not actually new — doubling, tripling, or quadrupling what competitors already offer rather than adding something the market genuinely lacks. The world would be fine without you.
Claiming a differentiator (especially 'excellent service') without a tangible Key Innovation that makes it real and undeniable. Wishing or claiming does not make it so.
Confusing strategy with message — the Strategy Stack is your internal read of the market and instructions to yourself, not your tagline or proposition. The Customer Story is the translation of strategy into message, not the strategy itself.
Making your company the hero of the Customer Story. The customer is James Bond. Your business is Q — crucial but not the protagonist.
Choosing the primary customer problem by interest rather than by the combination of PAIN (severity) and SCALE (commonality). The primary problem must apply very broadly and loosely.
Skipping the Company Story because it seems like the least important layer. A great Company Story with a mediocre strategy can still succeed; a weak Company Story will undermine even an excellent strategy.
Thinking innovation means only product or technology innovation. There are nine types — failure to scan all nine leads to missed, often easier, opportunities.
Using the Duplication technique by copying competitors rather than copying companies in completely unrelated categories. Copying competitors only yields incremental variation, not breakthrough New Value.
Treating the 3 Ds as a one-and-done exercise rather than exploring all three. If Disagreement yields nothing (most people are not naturally contrarian), Difference or Duplication may yield stronger New Value.

// What do the key Strategy Stack terms mean?

Strategy Stack: The complete collection of necessary strategic components, split into two sections — what you DO (New Value + Key Innovation) and what you SAY (Customer Story + Company Story). Each layer depends on the layer beneath it.
New Value: The genuinely novel, innovative value that a business brings to the market that did not exist before — the foundational reason the business should exist. If removed, the world would be no worse off. All other stack components serve it.
The 3 Ds: Three mental models for generating breakthrough New Value: Disagreement (contrarian founder belief vs. industry status quo), Difference (accidental or existing divergence from competitors), and Duplication (transplanting a form of value from an unrelated industry into yours).
Key Innovation: The specific, tangible, genuinely creative action the business takes that directly produces the New Value. Must be something you can put your finger on — not a vague aspiration. Drawn from nine possible innovation types.
Nine Types of Innovation: The full range of innovation possibilities: Product Features, Production Method, Routes to Market, Service Bundling, Branding (only if extreme), Targeting, Customer Experience, Pricing, and Culture.
We Are the Only: A validation sentence for the doing-half of the stack: 'We are the only [category] that does [Key Innovation] so that customers get [New Value].' If you cannot complete this clearly, the strategy needs more work.
Customer Story: The translation of internal strategy into an outward-facing customer narrative. Structure: 'You know how [customer problem]... well we [Key Innovation]... so you [dream end state].' Forms the underlying logic for all sales and marketing communications.
Company Story: The narrative that communicates strategy to everyone who is not a customer — team, investors, partners, press, and the founder themselves. Six-part structure: Origin, Problem Noticed, Unique Belief, What You're Going To Do, What This Means for Customers, What This Means for the World.
Increase Demand, Lower Supply: The dual strategic goal: simultaneously making more people want what you offer (demand) while ensuring they can only get it from you (supply). The combination creates genuine market leverage.
Unique Belief: The founder's original, contrarian insight — part of the Company Story — that identifies not just what is wrong with the industry but how it could be fixed. The spark that the Key Innovation flows from.
The Red Thread: The principle that New Value must run consistently and visibly through every layer of the Strategy Stack — from Innovation through to both stories. Any layer that breaks this continuity signals a stack that needs revision.

// FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is the Strategy Stack?

The Strategy Stack is Alex MH Smith's framework that treats strategy as a collection of components stacked in order, not one monolithic thing. It splits into two sections: what you DO (New Value + Key Innovation) and what you SAY (Customer Story + Company Story). Every layer depends on the one beneath it, so you build from New Value up.

What is New Value in business strategy?

New Value is the genuinely novel value a business brings to the market that didn't exist before — the foundational reason the business should exist. If your business disappeared and the world would be fine, your New Value isn't new enough. It's the base of the entire Strategy Stack, and every other component serves it.

How do I find a differentiator for my business?

Use the 3 Ds: Disagreement (your contrarian belief about the industry), Difference (ways you already diverge from competitors, often accidentally), and Duplication (copying a form of value from a completely unrelated industry). Work through all three lenses, trace each to a form of customer value, and land on one clear New Value the market genuinely lacks.

How do I explain my strategy to customers?

Translate your internal strategy into a Customer Story using the structure: 'You know how [problem]... well we [Key Innovation]... so you [dream end state].' The ratio is two parts about the customer, one part about you. The customer is James Bond; your company is Q — crucial but not the hero.

How does the Strategy Stack compare to a generic value proposition exercise?

A generic value proposition jumps straight to messaging, often producing vague claims like 'excellent service.' The Strategy Stack forces you to build actual New Value backed by a tangible Key Innovation first, then translate it into message. It separates strategy (your internal read of the market) from message (the customer-facing narrative), preventing empty positioning.

When should I use the Strategy Stack Blueprint?

Use it whenever a business needs to define or sharpen strategy from the ground up — launching a new venture, repositioning an existing one, or diagnosing why it feels generic and can't stand out. It's also ideal when you have a solid offer but can't articulate it clearly to customers, staff, or investors.

What results can I expect from applying the Strategy Stack?

You'll get a coherent strategy where New Value runs as a red thread through every layer, a defensible differentiator you can prove, and clear narratives for both customers and your team. The dual goal is to increase demand for what you sell while ensuring customers can only get it from you — which creates market leverage and higher profits.

What are the nine types of innovation?

Product Features, Production Method, Routes to Market, Service Bundling, Branding (only if taken to an extreme), Targeting, Customer Experience, Pricing, and Culture. Recognising all nine dramatically expands what counts as a valid Key Innovation — most people wrongly assume innovation means only product or technology, missing easier opportunities.

What is the difference between the Customer Story and the Company Story?

The Customer Story is aimed at customers and frames everything around their problem and dream end state. The Company Story is for everyone who isn't a customer — team, investors, partners, press, and yourself. It's an inspiring six-part narrative (Origin to What This Means for the World) that makes people want to join and push the mission forward.

How do I know if my New Value is actually new?

Ask: would the world be fine without this? Are you doubling, tripling, or quadrupling what competitors already do — or truly adding something the market lacks? If competitors already offer it, it isn't new enough. Iterate on the 3 Ds until you have something the market has genuinely not seen.

// GET THIS SKILL — FREE