Create new products or significantly improve existing ones for your current customer base.
Before you launch that shiny new product to a brand new audience (Diversification), ask yourself if you have truly exhausted Market Penetration first. Most of your profit is hiding in the box you are currently ignoring.
By plotting "Products" (New vs. Existing) against "Markets" (New vs. Existing), Ansoff created a 2x2 grid that defines four distinct growth strategies, ranked from lowest risk to highest risk.
This introduces the concept of – the alignment between external conditions and internal responses. For Ansoff, the goal of strategic management is not to maximize profit in the short term, but to achieve strategic fitness —a dynamic equilibrium between the firm and its changing world.
The Gap is the difference between projected performance (if you continue your current strategy) and your performance objective (your growth target).