White space analysis: build the grid, then check the empty cells with buyers

White space analysis is a grid of customer groups against the needs or products you could serve, with competitors filled into each cell, so the empty cells show where nobody is serving the buyer yet. Build the grid in an afternoon, then spend most of your effort proving that each empty cell is real demand rather than a cell that is empty for a good reason. The second part is where white space analysis usually goes wrong, and it is the part that needs conversations with buyers instead of more desk research.

An empty cell on a slide looks like an opportunity. Sometimes it is one. Often it means the buyers in that cell have no budget, already solved the problem with a spreadsheet, or are blocked by something your grid has no column for.

1. Decide which kind of white space you mean before you draw anything

The phrase gets used for three different jobs, and the grid looks different for each one.

In strategy, the term is the subject of Mark W. Johnson's 2010 book Seizing the White Space. A review on McGee's Musings quotes his definition as activities that the company's current business model does not define or address, and notes that he means opportunities outside the core and beyond nearby adjacencies, which need a different business model to capture. An Ottawa Business Journal review notes that the book's premise first appeared in a 2008 Harvard Business Review article, Reinventing Your Business Model, by Johnson, Clayton Christensen and Henning Kagermann.

In sales, white space means room to upsell, cross-sell and expand, starting with the customers you already have. Zendesk's guide lays it out as a table with customer accounts on one axis and products or services on the other, so the blank spots show where you could sell next.

In retail, it means geographic markets where demand for a brand exists but supply falls short. Passby frames it as choosing which markets to enter, which comes before choosing which property to lease.

Pick one. The rest of this post covers the strategy and sales versions, which share the same grid and the same trap.

2. Put customer groups on one axis and jobs on the other, in words a buyer would use

Rows are customer groups you can name and find. Columns are the jobs those customers need done, or the products you could sell them. If you could not make a list of ten real people for a row, the row is too vague.

Here is a made-up example. Priya runs product at a company that sells inventory software to independent bike shops. Her grid has four rows (independent single-store shops, multi-store chains, e-bike specialists, repair-only shops) and four columns (counting stock, handling special orders, tracking repair tickets, managing a rental fleet). That is 16 cells, which is a manageable number to investigate.

Write the columns as jobs, not features. "Tracking repair tickets" is something a shop owner would say out loud. "Workflow module" is something only your roadmap would say. If you want a deeper method for naming jobs, the jobs to be done framing fits this axis well.

For the sales version, the rows are accounts and the columns are your products. Zendesk adds a useful step: break each account into buying centers, meaning the divisions, departments or regions that can make purchases on their own. A large customer that bought one product from one division has more white space than a single row suggests.

Short version: keep the grid small enough that you could call someone about every cell.

3. Fill every cell with what the buyer uses today, including spreadsheets and nothing

Go cell by cell and write down what a buyer in that row uses for that job right now. Competitors go here, but so do the substitutes that never show up in a competitor list: a shared spreadsheet, a paper notebook, a part-time bookkeeper, or simply not doing the job.

In Priya's grid, the cell for repair-only shops and rental fleets is empty because repair-only shops do not rent bikes. That cell should not be on the grid at all. (Every grid has at least one. Finding yours early saves a meeting.)

The cell for e-bike specialists and repair tickets also looks empty, because none of the four software vendors she tracks offers repair tracking for e-bike motors. But she does not yet know what those shops actually use. The competitor analysis post makes the same point from another angle: the rival you most need to beat might be a spreadsheet.

4. Sort every empty cell into one of four kinds of empty

An empty cell can mean four different things, and only one of them is good news.

Passby makes the same point for store expansion: a market with no competitors is not automatically white space. It qualifies only when enough target customers are there, they are underserved, and the economics of a location can support a profitable store. Swap "store" for "product" and the three tests carry over.

You cannot sort cells into these four buckets from your desk. Desk research tells you whether a vendor exists. It rarely tells you whether buyers care, what they use instead, or who would sign the purchase order.

5. Talk to three to five buyers per candidate cell before you score it

Once you have a short list of cells that might be real, go talk to people who live in those cells. Start with three to five conversations per cell. When a cell is empty for a reason, buyers tend to give you the same reason quickly, and you can stop there.

This step matters because building into a cell nobody wants is a common way to fail. In a CB Insights analysis dated March 2026, poor product-market fit was cited for 43% of the venture-backed startups whose failure reasons it could identify, out of 431 shutdowns since 2023.

Ask about the past, not the future. "Would you use repair tracking for e-bike motors?" gets a polite yes from almost everyone. These questions work better:

1. The last time you handled this job, what did you do, step by step?
2. What did that cost you, in time, money or lost customers?
3. What have you tried to fix it, and why did you stop?
4. Who would have to approve paying for a fix?
5. If this problem vanished tomorrow, what would you do with the time?

Back to the made-up example. Priya talks to four e-bike shop owners. Three of them track motor repairs in the warranty portal that the motor manufacturer provides, and they are happy with it. One uses a whiteboard. That cell turns out to be hidden supply, and she learned it in four calls instead of a quarter of engineering time.

Meanwhile, the multi-store chain owners she talks to all describe moving special orders between stores with text messages and a shared spreadsheet, and two of them have lost a customer over it in the last month. That cell had a competitor in it on her grid (one vendor lists the feature), but the buyers do not use it. A cell can be crowded on paper and empty in practice. Mark those too.

For more on running these conversations well, see customer interview questions and how many customer interviews you need.

Short version: the grid tells you where to look, and buyers tell you what you found.

6. Check whether your current business model can serve the cell at all

Johnson defines white space as opportunities that need a different business model to capture, per the McGee's Musings review, which is why a cell can pass every buyer test and still be the wrong one for your company.

His framework has four parts: the customer value proposition, the profit formula, and the key resources and processes needed to deliver the value, as described in the Ottawa Business Journal review. Run each surviving cell through those four questions. Can you describe what this buyer gets? Can you make money at the price they would pay? Do you have the people and assets to deliver it? Do your current sales and support processes fit this buyer?

For Priya, the special orders cell passes easily: same type of buyer, same price range, same support team. A cell like rental fleets for chains might need insurance partnerships and a different sales cycle. Keep it, and score it as a new business rather than a new feature.

Johnson's book also splits white space into three types: within (transforming an existing market), beyond (creating a new market) and between (dealing with a shift that disrupts a whole industry), per the same McGee review. Labelling each cell this way is a quick check on how much change it asks of your company.

7. Skip the grid when you already know where the demand is

White space analysis earns its time when you have several plausible directions and no clear signal. It is a poor fit in two cases.

If customers are already asking for a specific thing and you can count the requests, build or test that thing. Mapping the whole market first is a detour. If you are pre-product with no customers at all, start with customer discovery in one segment, because a 16-cell grid with no buyers behind any row is mostly guesswork with borders.

The sales version also fits poorly when your product line is one product. An accounts-by-products grid with one column is a list.

8. Score the surviving cells and pick one to test

Once the conversations are done, you will usually have a handful of cells marked real white space. Score each one on three things the buyers told you: how often the job comes up, how much the current workaround costs, and whether you found a person with the budget to pay. Pick the top cell and run a small test there, such as a paid pilot with two or three of the buyers you already talked to. The market validation post covers how to structure that ask.

The hardest part of all this is reaching enough people in each row. For a cell like "multi-store chain owners," you need a few specific operators, not a general survey panel. If you know the kind of person you need (for example, key account management experts for the sales version, or heads of strategy to pressure-test a new-market cell), Instant Expert can find and invite them to a short paid call, and you pay only if they book or answer.

Draw the grid this week, circle the three empty cells you are most excited about, and talk to buyers in each before anyone writes a line of code for them.