Vertical Deep Dive

Generic AI strategies fail. In this lab, you'll conduct a comprehensive analysis of a specific vertical and develop an actionable AI playbook tailored to its unique characteristics.

What you'll create:

• Vertical landscape analysis
• AI opportunity assessment
• Data and system readiness evaluation
• Competitive intelligence summary
• Complete vertical AI playbook

Choose Your Focus

Option A: Retail & Commerce (Recommended) Use the retail/commerce vertical with the GEO and agentic commerce context from the modules.

Option B: Your Industry If you work in a different industry, adapt the analysis to your vertical.

Option C: Hypothetical Vertical Choose one: Healthcare, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Media & Entertainment

Document Your Selection

VERTICAL SELECTION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Vertical: _________________________
Sub-segment (if applicable): _________________________

Your Role:
□ Work in this vertical currently
□ Want to work in this vertical
□ Exploring for academic purposes

Level of Familiarity:
□ Deep expertise (5+ years)
□ Moderate (1-5 years)
□ Limited (research needed)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Industry Dynamics

VERTICAL DYNAMICS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MARKET CHARACTERISTICS
Total addressable market: $___
Growth rate: ___%
Key segments:
•
•
•

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
Market leaders:
1.
2.
3.

Disruptors/challengers:
1.
2.

CUSTOMER DYNAMICS
Primary customer segments:
•
•
•

Key customer expectations:
•
•
•

How customers discover/evaluate (pre-AI):
_________________________________________

How AI is changing discovery:
_________________________________________
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Regulatory Environment

REGULATORY CONTEXT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Key Regulations:
| Regulation | Scope | AI Impact |
|------------|-------|-----------|
|            |       |           |
|            |       |           |
|            |       |           |

Data Privacy Considerations:
•
•

AI-Specific Requirements:
•
•

Emerging Regulatory Trends:
•
•
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Value Chain Analysis

VALUE CHAIN MAP
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Draw or describe the value chain for your vertical]

Key stages:
1. _________________________ → AI opportunity: _________
2. _________________________ → AI opportunity: _________
3. _________________________ → AI opportunity: _________
4. _________________________ → AI opportunity: _________
5. _________________________ → AI opportunity: _________

Highest AI impact stages:
1.
2.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Opportunity Inventory

For your vertical, identify opportunities across domains:

AI OPPORTUNITY INVENTORY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
| Opportunity | Value | Feasibility | Notes |
|-------------|:-----:|:-----------:|-------|
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |

OPERATIONS
| Opportunity | Value | Feasibility | Notes |
|-------------|:-----:|:-----------:|-------|
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |

BACK OFFICE
| Opportunity | Value | Feasibility | Notes |
|-------------|:-----:|:-----------:|-------|
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |

ANALYTICS & DECISION SUPPORT
| Opportunity | Value | Feasibility | Notes |
|-------------|:-----:|:-----------:|-------|
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
|             | H/M/L |    H/M/L    |       |
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Deep Dive: Top 3 Opportunities

For your three highest-value opportunities:

OPPORTUNITY DEEP DIVE #1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: _________________________

Problem Statement:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________

How AI Solves It:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________

Value Drivers:
• Revenue impact: $_____/year
• Cost reduction: $_____/year
• Other value: _____

Key Requirements:
• Data needed:
• Systems to integrate:
• Team skills:
• Technology:

Risks:
• Technical:
• Operational:
• Regulatory:

Horizon: □ H1 (0-6mo) □ H2 (6-18mo) □ H3 (18+mo)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Complete for opportunities #2 and #3.

Data Readiness

DATA READINESS ASSESSMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For each critical data domain, rate 1-5:
(1=Not available, 5=Production ready)

| Data Domain | Quality | Accessibility | Governance | Score |
|-------------|:-------:|:-------------:|:----------:|:-----:|
| Customer    |    __   |      __       |     __     |   __  |
| Product     |    __   |      __       |     __     |   __  |
| Transaction |    __   |      __       |     __     |   __  |
| Operational |    __   |      __       |     __     |   __  |
| External    |    __   |      __       |     __     |   __  |

Critical Gaps:
1.
2.
3.

Remediation Priorities:
1.
2.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

System Readiness

SYSTEM READINESS ASSESSMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| System | API Ready | Real-Time | Integration Effort |
|--------|:---------:|:---------:|:------------------:|
|        | Yes/No    | Yes/No    | Low/Med/High       |
|        | Yes/No    | Yes/No    | Low/Med/High       |
|        | Yes/No    | Yes/No    | Low/Med/High       |
|        | Yes/No    | Yes/No    | Low/Med/High       |
|        | Yes/No    | Yes/No    | Low/Med/High       |

Infrastructure Needs:
□ Vector database
□ LLM hosting/API access
□ Real-time streaming
□ API gateway
□ Other: _____

Build vs. Buy Considerations:
_________________________________________
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI Competitive Landscape

COMPETITIVE AI ANALYSIS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MARKET LEADERS
| Company | AI Capabilities | Threat Level | Learning |
|---------|-----------------|:------------:|----------|
|         |                 |    H/M/L     |          |
|         |                 |    H/M/L     |          |
|         |                 |    H/M/L     |          |

DISRUPTORS
| Company | AI Approach | Threat Level | Learning |
|---------|-------------|:------------:|----------|
|         |             |    H/M/L     |          |
|         |             |    H/M/L     |          |

EMERGING PLAYERS (Startups, Tech entrants)
| Company | AI Approach | Watch Level | Learning |
|---------|-------------|:-----------:|----------|
|         |             |    H/M/L    |          |
|         |             |    H/M/L    |          |

COMPETITIVE GAPS (Where you can differentiate)
1.
2.
3.

TABLE STAKES (Must-have to compete)
1.
2.
3.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Discovery Audit (GEO Perspective)

If applicable to your vertical, conduct a basic discovery audit:

DISCOVERY AUDIT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Test 5 relevant prompts across ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity:

| Prompt | Your Brand Cited? | Competitors Cited | Sentiment |
|--------|:-----------------:|-------------------|-----------|
|        | Yes/No            |                   | +/0/-     |
|        | Yes/No            |                   | +/0/-     |
|        | Yes/No            |                   | +/0/-     |
|        | Yes/No            |                   | +/0/-     |
|        | Yes/No            |                   | +/0/-     |

Citation Share: ___%
Key Observations:
•
•
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Synthesize Into a Complete Playbook

VERTICAL AI PLAYBOOK: [Vertical Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
[2-3 sentences summarizing the AI opportunity and approach]

VERTICAL CONTEXT

Market Size: $___
Growth: ___%
Key Dynamics: ___
Regulatory Environment: ___

PRIORITIZED OPPORTUNITIES

| Priority | Opportunity | Horizon | Investment | Expected Value |
|:--------:|-------------|:-------:|:----------:|----------------|
| 1        |             | H1/2/3  | $          |                |
| 2        |             | H1/2/3  | $          |                |
| 3        |             | H1/2/3  | $          |                |
| 4        |             | H1/2/3  | $          |                |
| 5        |             | H1/2/3  | $          |                |

READINESS SUMMARY

Data Readiness: [Low/Medium/High]
Key gaps: ___

System Readiness: [Low/Medium/High]
Key gaps: ___

Talent Readiness: [Low/Medium/High]
Key gaps: ___

COMPETITIVE POSITION

Current AI maturity vs. competitors: [Behind/Parity/Ahead]
Key differentiation opportunities:
1.
2.

Defensive priorities:
1.
2.

RECOMMENDED ROADMAP

Phase 1 (Q1-Q2): ___
• Initiative 1:
• Initiative 2:
• Key milestones:

Phase 2 (Q3-Q4): ___
• Initiative 1:
• Initiative 2:
• Key milestones:

Phase 3 (Year 2): ___
• Initiative 1:
• Initiative 2:
• Key milestones:

INVESTMENT REQUIREMENTS

Year 1 Budget: $___
Team Size: ___ FTEs
Key Hires: ___

Technology Investments:
•
•

SUCCESS METRICS

| Metric | Baseline | Year 1 Target |
|--------|:--------:|:-------------:|
|        |          |               |
|        |          |               |
|        |          |               |

KEY RISKS & MITIGATIONS

| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
|------|:----------:|:------:|------------|
|      | H/M/L      | H/M/L  |            |
|      | H/M/L      | H/M/L  |            |
|      | H/M/L      | H/M/L  |            |

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Create a complete Vertical Deep Dive Package:

1. Vertical Landscape Analysis (Part 2)

   • Industry dynamics
   • Regulatory context
   • Value chain map

2. AI Opportunity Assessment (Part 3)

   • Opportunity inventory
   • Deep dives on top 3

3. Readiness Assessment (Part 4)

   • Data readiness
   • System readiness

4. Competitive Intelligence (Part 5)

   • Competitive landscape
   • Discovery audit (if applicable)

5. Vertical AI Playbook (Part 6)

   • Complete synthesized playbook

Present the Playbook

1. Create a 10-slide executive presentation summarizing the playbook
2. Practice presenting to an AI assistant playing "skeptical executive"
3. Prepare for questions about:
   • Investment justification
   • Competitive urgency
   • Risk mitigation
   • Team and capability needs
4. Refine based on the Q&A experience