THE CLIENT
Kymera International is a U.S.-based global manufacturer of advanced specialty metal powders and high-performance surface coatings, with a heritage stretching back more than 100 years. Operating across aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical, and industrial end markets, the company had built a strong technical reputation and a leadership position in its core product categories.
The company had both the technical depth and the market relationships to expand into adjacent applications. Its core markets were maturing, margins were under pressure from commoditisation, and competitors were moving downstream into higher-value segments. The leadership team knew that the next phase of growth had to come from somewhere other than the core. It needed to build an organic growth strategy that does not depend on the core continuing to deliver.
THE CHALLENGE
Kymera’s commercial activity had long been driven by technical excellence and customer pull: responding to inbound requests, developing products to meet existing specifications, serving known markets well. This had built a strong business. But the organisation had no process for proactively scanning new market segments, no portfolio logic to evaluate opportunities against each other, and no governance to make and sustain growth decisions.
Several new markets had been loosely identified, but these remained informal discussions rather than structured opportunities. There was no shared framework for deciding which to pursue, what capability gaps needed closing, or how to sequence investment across different time horizons. The R&D pipeline was, in effect, a queue of core business improvements rather than a portfolio of opportunities to drive future growth.
The structural shifts underway in Kymera’s key end markets made the cost of inaction clear. The transition to electrification in the automotive industry, the rapid growth of additive manufacturing, and increasing demand for advanced coatings were reshaping value chains and creating windows for manufacturers that moved early. Without a system to identify and progress those opportunities, Kymera risked being positioned as a volume commodity supplier in markets that were rewarding differentiation.
APPROACH
Designing an Organic Growth Strategy
Strategos partnered with Kymera’s leadership and R&D teams to design and execute a structured opportunity identification and NPD process — built with the client, not for them. The engagement was organised around four stages: Frame, Opportunity, Evaluate, and Implement.
The Frame phase established the strategic boundaries: growth targets, portfolio criteria, and minimum thresholds for opportunity selection. Rather than treating growth as an open-ended search, this phase created the decision architecture that would allow the team to evaluate a large number of options quickly and consistently.
The Opportunity phase applied Strategos’ performance-benefits methodology: mapping the functional benefits that Kymera’s materials delivered in existing applications, then systematically scanning for adjacent sectors where those same benefits were valued. The reframe from ‘what do we make’ to ‘what problems do we solve’ was the engine of the entire process.
The Evaluate phase moved from landscape to detail. The team conducted structured market research and outreach across target sectors, connecting with approximately 70 external experts — materials scientists, OEM engineers, procurement leads, and market specialists. This voice-of-customer work validated market size, confirmed technical feasibility, and surfaced the commercial dynamics that would determine whether an opportunity was genuinely accessible.
THE SOLUTION
The project began with several dozen candidate opportunities, evaluated systematically against strategic fit, market size, margin potential, and Kymera’s ability to leverage existing technology. Around 50% progressed to a detailed assessment. Half of those were selected for full elaboration and go-to-market design.
Each opportunity was documented with market size estimates, addressable volume, competitive landscape, and voice-of-customer findings. For each, the team developed a specific go-to-market recommendation — whether the right pathway was an OEM partnership, direct manufacture, or a targeted acquisition where organic development alone would be too slow. The portfolio was structured across near-, medium-, and long-term horizons: a sequenced plan, not an undifferentiated list.
Alongside the portfolio, Strategos designed a front-end innovation system for Kymera to operate independently: an innovation strategy framework linked to commercial objectives; a portfolio model spanning core, adjacent, and exploratory bets; a stage-gate process calibrated to the company’s specific risk profile; and clear team roles for sustaining the pipeline. The design principle throughout was the same: Kymera should leave with a functioning system, not a dependency on external support.
OUTCOMES AND IMPACT
Kymera emerged from the engagement with a prioritised portfolio of fully elaborated, market-validated opportunities, each with a defined go-to-market pathway, an assessment of capability requirements, and a recommended sequencing across horizons. The portfolio was grounded in 70+ direct expert conversations, not internal assumptions, giving the leadership team confidence in both the market logic and the commercial potential behind each opportunity.
More fundamentally, the organisation moved from reactive product development to a structured organic growth strategy it could sustain. The front-end innovation system — the strategy framework, portfolio model, stage gates, and VoC methodology — gave the R&D team a repeatable process it could operate without external facilitation. Kymera now had what it previously lacked: a shared language for evaluating growth options, a logic for deciding where to invest, and a pipeline that connected its technical capabilities to the structural shifts reshaping its most important end markets.
