Industry analysis
from people inside it

The report you can buy is not about your question

Syndicated industry reports are written for everyone, which means they are written for no one. The market size is a model, the growth rate is an extrapolation, and the competitive section is a list of company descriptions. They are useful for framing and useless for deciding. The alternative on offer, a strategy consultancy's industry deep dive, is thorough and slow and priced accordingly.

Theory does industry analysis for a specific decision, with primary evidence. We start from what you need to know to invest, enter, price, partner or exit, and we build the picture from people who work in the sector now or left it recently, checked against the numbers that can be checked.

What we cover

Structure: who the participants are at each stage, how concentrated each stage is, and where the margins sit. Economics: cost structures, pricing mechanisms, working capital patterns and what a good and a bad year look like. Competitive dynamics: how participants actually win business, what switching costs exist, how new entrants have fared and why. Customers and channels: who buys, how they decide, and what they are unhappy about. Regulation and technology: what is changing, on what timetable, and who it helps. Outlook: two or three scenarios for the next three to five years, with the indicators that would tell you which is arriving. Where the sector question is really a question about a single market's rules, it becomes policy analysis; where it is about a country, geopolitical risk.

Deliverables

A Signal Brief answers one sector question, such as whether margins in a segment are sustainable or how a channel is shifting: six to eight verified interviews, a signed two-page answer, a provenance appendix. A Decision Study delivers a full industry assessment for an investment thesis, a market entry or a strategy review: fifteen to thirty interviews, a written report with structure, economics, dynamics and outlook, a signed recommendation and a working session. An Intelligence Retainer keeps a sector under continuous coverage, with six to ten verified interviews a month and a signed monthly briefing.

Why primary

Every industry has a gap between what the published material says and what the people inside it know. The gap is where the decision is. Verified interviews close it, and the provenance appendix lets you see exactly whose knowledge you are relying on and how we confirmed they had it.

All work is delivered under The Theory Standard. See services and prices.