STR.1:5.1 - SensorCo: from “respond to AI” to a usable question

SensorCo and all facts in this example are constructed teaching inputs. The company supplies physical inspection sensors and field service. Generic AI-inspection prices have fallen over twelve months; the margin from that offering previously helped fund service. SensorCo also has field-service knowledge and a certified sensor platform.

The initial request is “find our AI strategy for 2027”. The team first distinguishes the inspection product from SensorCo’s ability to provide reliable inspection to its customers. A product-feature roadmap would leave the threatened service contribution unexplained.

The resulting question is:

For SensorCo’s affected inspection segment, what can we responsibly pursue and commit to over the next twelve months while sustaining current service? The StrategyTeam prepares the comparison for the Board. It considers device-only continuation, an integrated service, data licensing and segment exit. The Board retains the direction decision and can authorize only the resources and conduct within its established authority.

This frame does not select the integrated service. It names the declining-price premise that STR.2 will examine and the alternatives that later work must compare. Current service and transition duties remain in the question. Data rights and financing are distinct possible conditions, not capabilities conferred by the frame.

The team also distinguishes three possible changes: the inspection offering, SensorCo’s way of supplying and accepting service, and the specialists’ ability to do that work. The certified platform is an existing means, not evidence that all three changes are feasible. Effective data access or incident cover might be the limiting condition. That possibility belongs in the question without turning the opening frame into a diagnosis or a training commission.

The opening question is now complete enough to begin the needed analysis. The eventual four-day preparation decision belongs to the later comparison and selection; importing it here as a foregone answer would bias the whole exercise.