Strategy framework
Systematic Inventive Thinking
Innovation by removal. Take out something essential, not something peripheral, then work out who wants what is left. Most of the interesting answers look like a mistake at first.
The real components of the product, service or process, including the ones everyone assumes are compulsory.
Pick components a sensible person would call load-bearing, not the obvious fat. One line each, naming what goes.
Describe the reduced offering plainly, as a customer would meet it.
The segment for whom less is genuinely better, and why. Be specific about the person, not the demographic.
Cost, speed, simplicity, a new channel, a new use, a price point that was previously impossible.
Removing something moves work somewhere. Name where it goes: the customer, a partner, another component doing double duty.
The honest case against. What breaks, who objects, and what evidence would settle it before spending money.
Real products that won by removing something essential. Name the company and what they took out.
The idea is older than the book, but Leidy Klotz gave it a name and a reason: his son Ezra, handed a tower of blocks to even up, added one instead of taking one away, and Klotz realised almost nobody thinks to subtract.
VSTRAT runs Subtractive Thinking on your own business, guided at every step, with every claim cited to what you put in.
Try it on your business