Our Visionary wants us to build a proprietary AI tool and license it to other companies, essentially spinning off a SaaS product. How do we use our Core Focus™ on the V/TO® to decide if this is a massive growth opportunity or a dangerous distraction from our core service business?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Turning a successful service business into a software company is a classic trap that has broken many healthy operations. Before you write a single line of code, you must filter this idea through your Core Focus on the V/TO. Your Core Focus is your passion and your niche: it defines what you do better than anyone else and keeps your team aligned on a single goal.

If your Core Focus is delivering high-touch advisory services, building a software product to license to third parties will immediately fracture your organization. Software companies require completely different sales, marketing, customer support, and engineering seats on the Accountability Chart than service companies do. You will end up starving your profitable core business of cash and focus to feed a high-risk tech startup.

Use Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time to analyze this move. Spend forty-five minutes answering this question: How might we leverage our proprietary AI tools to scale our existing service business and increase our margins, rather than trying to build a software company from scratch?

If the technology can make your existing delivery ten times faster and more profitable, keep it internal. Use it to supercharge your margins and enterprise value. Do not let your Visionary drag you into a new, highly competitive industry that lies completely outside your Core Focus.