industry-bottleneck-hunter

name	industry-bottleneck-hunter
description	Use when the user wants to map supply-chain chokepoints and hidden-champion companies in an industry. Triggers — "bottleneck analysis", "supply chain chokepoint", "Strait of Hormuz", "hidden champion", "moat scan", or decomposing a company's business lines before industry analysis.
metadata	{"author":"Alex Zhang <[e-mail]>"}

industry-bottleneck-hunter

Find the chokepoints and hidden champions in any industry supply chain.

Leading Concepts

• Chokepoint (Strait-of-Hormuz link): A narrow, irreplaceable value-chain node whose disruption cascades downstream. It passes five tests: few suppliers, high downstream dependency, hard to substitute, inelastic capacity, and high value capture.
• Hidden champion: A small-output company that dominates a chokepoint through proprietary core technology.
• Moat scan: The legwork that proves a hidden champion's defensibility — patents, customer lock-in, regulatory licenses, and capital signals.

Workflow

Phase 0: Business-Line Decomposition (conditional)

Trigger: The user gives a company name or stock code instead of an industry.

Steps:

1. Map every material segment: >5% revenue, high gross margin, or strategic pipeline value.
2. Present a summary table: Segment | Revenue Share | Growth | Margin | Lifecycle | Moat Signal.
3. Ask the user which segment to analyze, or offer to run the strongest-bottleneck segment by default.

Completion: The user has confirmed the target segment, or you have explicit permission to proceed with the default.

Phase 1: Industry & Lifecycle Mapping

Steps:

1. Confirm target industry, geography, and goal: investment, business entry, supply-chain security, or competitive intelligence.
2. List major sub-sectors and classify each as Introduction, Growth, Maturity, or Decline.
3. Select Growth/Rising sub-sectors for deeper analysis.

Completion: You have 1–3 rising sub-sectors and the user's goal is recorded.

Phase 2: Value-Chain Decomposition

Steps:

1. For each rising sub-sector, map upstream → midstream → downstream in 4–6 major links.
2. For each link, estimate supplier concentration, gross margin, capital intensity, and technology maturity.

Completion: Each rising sub-sector has a value-chain tree with concentration and margin notes on every link.

Phase 3: Chokepoint Scan

Steps:

1. Score each link 1–5 on the five chokepoint criteria in references/chokepoint-criteria.md.
2. Mark links scoring ≥18/25 as candidate chokepoints.
3. For each candidate, answer: (a) % of downstream output that would halt if blocked for 6 months; (b) new-entrant time-to-viability; (c) minimum viable scale and required capital.
4. Narrow to 1–3 primary chokepoints per sub-sector.

Completion: You have 1–3 ranked chokepoints per rising sub-sector, each with quantitative justification.

Phase 4: Hidden-Champion Discovery

Steps:

1. Search within each chokepoint for candidate companies: industry associations, patents, niche reports, sole-source OEM suppliers, and M&A activity.
2. Compile a profile for each candidate: revenue, employees, core tech, key patents, major customers, market share, financial trend, and risks.
3. Run the implicit-intelligence moat scan from references/implicit-intelligence-guide.md across Technology & Patents, Customers & Supply Chain, and Regulatory & Capital Signals.
4. Update the verdict: Strong / Plausible / Reject.

Completion: You have 1–5 candidate companies per chokepoint, each with an implicit-intelligence scorecard and a final verdict.

Phase 5: Synthesis

Steps:

1. Produce the structured report using references/output-template.md.
2. State the highest-conviction chokepoint, the most attractive hidden champion, and the timeline to watch.
3. Flag evidence gaps and confidence levels explicitly.

Completion: A complete report is returned to the user and every claim has a source or an explicit confidence label.

Quality Gates

Before finalizing, confirm:

• Every chokepoint claim has quantitative support: market share, capacity, or margin.
• Every hidden-champion claim has at least one piece of implicit evidence.
• Technology moats are distinguished from capital moats.
• Chinese companies are checked for indigenous versus licensed technology.
• Evidence gaps and private-company estimates are labeled as directional.

Limitations

• This skill provides analytical structure, not real-time data. Verify financials against primary sources before acting.
• Private-company estimates are directional.
• Moats erode; reassess annually for fast-moving industries.