Distinctive Competencies (Framework: Market → Distinctive Competencies)

Articulate and leverage the organization's unique abilities to deliver value to the market. These are the strengths you intersect with validated market problems to find opportunities that are ideal for you (see the market-problem test and the opportunity-scoring attributes in ../pm-copilot/references/framework.md).

The test — an attribute is a distinctive competency only if it is all three

• Valued — the market actually cares about it (it maps to a real problem they'll pay to solve).
• Different — materially different from competitors and alternatives, not table stakes.
• Provable — you have proof (data, track record, patents, references), not just a claim.

Brainstorm broadly first (how you build, deliver, sell, and support), then filter hard. Most candidate strengths fail the "different" or "provable" test — that's expected.

Interview the user (batch questions)

1. Brainstorm: where does your organization deliver value across the whole lifecycle (build, deliver, sell, support, data, brand, relationships, IP)?
2. For each attribute — is it materially different from competitors and alternatives?
3. What's your proof it's both valued and different? (metrics, wins, patents, references)
4. Which market problems (from pm-market-problems) do these strengths let you solve better than anyone?

Artifact template

# Distinctive Competencies — <organization / product>

**Company:** <company>  ·  **Feature / Product:** <feature / product name>
**Author:** <author>  ·  **Date created:** <date>  ·  **Version:** 1.0

Brainstorm attributes where your organization delivers value, then test each:
*valued? · materially different? · provable?*

| Attribute | Valued? (Y/N) | Different? (Y/N) | Proof |
| :--- | :---: | :---: | :--- |
| <attribute> | Y | Y | <evidence> |
| <attribute> | Y | N | <why it fails — table stakes> |

## Articulate your Distinctive Competencies
Based on this assessment, the attributes that are valued **and** different **and**
provable are:

1. **Distinctive Competency:** <statement>
2. **Distinctive Competency:** <statement>
3. **Distinctive Competency:** <statement>

## How these map to market problems
| Distinctive Competency | Market problem it lets us win | Evidence |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |

Deliver the artifact

Follow ../pm-copilot/references/artifact-output.md: ask Markdown or .docx, write the .md, convert to .docx on request via your environment's native document-creation capability. Then offer the next stage: score opportunities against these strengths in pm-opportunity-scoring, or set direction in pm-product-strategy.