--- name: make-vs-buy-vs-partner-evaluator description: "Evaluates whether a strategic capability gap should be closed by building organically, acquiring, forming a joint venture, or partnering — scoring each pathway across time-to-capability, cost, control, strategic importance, and execution risk, then delivering a weighted recommendation with deal structure guidance and a decision-defense memo. Use when deciding how to enter a new market, acquire a technology or capability, close a competitive gap, or choose between building, buying, or partnering for a strategic initiative." argument-hint: "[capability-gap] [strategic-context]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # Make-vs-Buy-vs-Partner Evaluator ## Purpose Turn an ambiguous "should we build, buy, or partner?" debate into a scored, defensible recommendation — weighing each pathway (organic build, acquisition, joint venture, commercial partnership) against time-to-capability, total cost, control, strategic importance, and execution risk, then specifying the deal structure and the conditions under which the recommendation would flip. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Decide whether to build a new capability in-house or acquire it - Evaluate acquisition vs. partnership vs. joint venture for entering a market - Close a competitive or technology gap and choose the fastest defensible path - Justify a build/buy/partner decision to the board or investment committee - Compare a specific acquisition target against building the same capability organically - Assess whether a strategic capability is core enough to own or peripheral enough to rent ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **Capability gap**: The specific capability, technology, market access, or asset the company lacks - **Strategic rationale**: Why this matters now — the business goal it serves - **Strategic importance**: Is this core to future differentiation, or an enabler/adjacency? - **Time pressure**: When the capability is needed to matter (e.g., 6 months, 18 months, 3 years) - **Financial capacity**: Available capital, appetite for dilution/debt, and rough budget envelope - **Internal starting point**: What relevant talent, IP, or infrastructure already exists in-house - **Known options**: Any specific acquisition targets, partners, or JV candidates already identified If strategic importance or time pressure is missing, ask one clarifying question before proceeding — these two variables swing the recommendation more than any other. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Define the Capability Gap Precisely Restate the gap in one sentence that separates the *capability* from the *mechanism*. Distinguish: - **What must be true** for the strategy to succeed (the outcome) - **The capability required** to make it true (talent, IP, market access, distribution, brand, regulatory position) - **The magnitude of the gap** — is this a head start to catch up on, or net-new terrain? Flag whether the gap is a *core* capability (source of durable differentiation — bias toward owning) or an *enabler/adjacency* (bias toward renting or partnering). This framing anchors the entire evaluation. ### Step 2: Score Each Pathway Across 5 Criteria Assess all four pathways — **Make (organic build)**, **Buy (acquisition)**, **Partner (commercial partnership)**, **JV (joint venture)** — against these criteria. Score each 1–5 (5 = strongest on that dimension for this decision). - **Time-to-Capability**: Realistic time to a working, at-scale capability. Build is slowest for net-new; acquisition is fastest but adds integration lag; partnership is fast to launch but capped in depth. - **Total Cost**: All-in cost including hidden costs — build (opportunity cost, ramp, failure risk), buy (premium, integration, retention), JV (governance overhead, split economics), partner (margin share, dependency cost). - **Control**: Degree of control over roadmap, IP, talent, and customer relationship. Build = full; Buy = full post-close; JV = shared; Partner = limited. - **Strategic Importance Fit**: Does the ownership model match how core the capability is? Owning a non-core capability wastes capital; renting a core one cedes the future. - **Execution Risk**: Probability the pathway actually delivers — build execution risk, integration/culture risk (buy), governance deadlock risk (JV), dependency and misalignment risk (partner). Present as a scoring table: rows = pathways, columns = the 5 criteria + a weighted total. ### Step 3: Apply Decision Weights Weight the 5 criteria based on the strategic context (default weights, adjust and state assumptions): - Strategic Importance Fit — 30% - Time-to-Capability — 25% - Execution Risk — 20% - Total Cost — 15% - Control — 10% If the capability is core, raise Control and Strategic Importance Fit weights. If time pressure is acute, raise Time-to-Capability. Compute a weighted score per pathway and rank them. ### Step 4: Pressure-Test the Leading Pathway For the top-ranked pathway, run a fast red-team: - **Build**: Do we have the talent to build this, or are we assuming we can hire it? What's the real ramp? - **Buy**: Is there a viable target at a rational price? What's the integration and retention risk? Is this "acqui-hire" or genuine asset acquisition? - **Partner**: Does the partner's incentive stay aligned as we scale? What happens if they get acquired or exit? - **JV**: Who controls decision rights? What's the deadlock resolution? What's the exit/unwind path? Note any condition under which the recommendation would flip to the second-ranked option — the decision's sensitivity. ### Step 5: Specify the Deal Structure For the recommended pathway, provide concrete structuring guidance: - **Build**: Team composition, budget phasing, first milestone, and a kill/pivot checkpoint - **Buy**: Target profile, valuation logic, earn-out vs. all-cash considerations, retention terms for key talent, integration approach (absorb vs. hold separate) - **Partner**: Exclusivity vs. non-exclusive, economic split, IP ownership, term length, and off-ramp - **JV**: Ownership split, governance and board structure, capital contributions, decision rights, and unwind mechanics ### Step 6: Write the Decision-Defense Summary A 3–4 sentence recommendation the executive can carry into a board or investment committee: the pathway, the single most important reason, the primary risk being accepted, and the trigger that would reverse it. ## Output Format - **Structure**: Gap definition → scoring table → weighted ranking → red-team of the leader → deal structure → decision-defense summary - **Length**: 1,000–1,400 words - **Format**: Prose framing with a central scoring/weighting table; deal structure as labeled bullets - **Sections**: Capability Gap Definition → Pathway Scoring Table → Weighted Recommendation → Pressure Test → Recommended Deal Structure → Decision-Defense Summary - **Tone**: Corporate development principal — decisive, capital-allocation minded, willing to name the trade-off rather than hedge ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] All four pathways (Make, Buy, Partner, JV) are scored across all 5 criteria - [ ] Every criterion score is justified in one line — not a bare number - [ ] Decision weights are stated explicitly and adjusted for stated strategic context - [ ] The weighted total mathematically supports the stated recommendation (no override without reasoning) - [ ] The recommendation names at least one condition that would flip it to the runner-up - [ ] Deal structure guidance is specific to the recommended pathway — not generic to all four ## Notes - The most common error is defaulting to "build" for capabilities that are important but not differentiating — owning a non-core capability quietly ties up capital and management attention. Match the ownership model to strategic importance. - Acquisition looks fastest on paper but integration lag often erases the time advantage — weight execution risk honestly for deals involving culture or talent retention. - Partnerships are underrated for testing a market before committing capital; a partner-first, buy-later sequence is often the highest-expected-value path when time pressure is moderate and the gap is unproven. - JVs carry the highest governance cost of any pathway — recommend one only when neither party can or should own the capability alone. --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. 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