Dear Gulati,

thank you for this interesting theory. I am however not completely agreeing with your conclusion.  If I look at other examples in the world, I can find those that have no gone looking to adjacenties, but yet have been very succesfull and remain so today. For example, Mercedes.

If I look at the example, my hypotheses would be this: Companies need to look at the Core Strength, and then look at how to use this. For example Kodak, it's core strength was that it was better then it's competition in image/picture quality. By not keeping on that top position and keeping focus on being the best in the digital age, they went the wrong direction.  To go back to Mercedes as an example, because of there branding and their continuous optimazation of luxery, quality and now models (their Strengths in the car-world), they keep staying on top and in a high position.

Other example could be Coca Cola. For their production, they need high amounts of clean water. As these systems are in place, it is easy to make the step to sell Water aswell, as the infrastructure (production and logistics) is allready there. It is just increasing their production output of some of the machines and a new lable. 

So my conclusion is that is focus on the Core Strength that leads to the succes. However, for many companies, expending on their core strenghts, will lead them to adjacencies. That makes it, atleast for me, that the focus is not on finding Adjacencies, but that this is a natural result when focusing on Core-Strength of the company. 

I would love to know your responds on my comment/theory.