Creating or Spotting New Opportunities LO16364

Walter Derzko @ Idea Lab (@)
Sat, 27 Dec 1997 09:37:20 -0500

I'm curious to find out how companies spot or create opportunites ? What
thinking skills or strategies do you use ? How do you turn change or
expected change into opportunities? Is it formal or informal?

Most I find copy or just jump on a trend...this is easy to do and doesn't
require much deep thought, but often this quickly leads to excess
capacity..."ie. everyone is doing it" and this trend riding produces an
eccelerated loss of novelty, initial surprise, the aha impact that you
were looking for.

What makes some companies or entrepreneurs better at spotting,
anticipating or creating new and different opportunties? Is it reactive or
proactive? Are you looking for change or reacting to it or both? Are
there formal mechanisms to track or use this "change" info in companies or
is it ad hoc ? ie. I clip an newspaper article and take it to my boss and
chat over coffee."

One formal pro-active technique that I use with some clients is called the
Opportunity Clinic.

One uses a checklist of generic opportunity windows, that were successfull
opportunties for someone else in the past. I developed this list from a
radio show I used to do in the 1980's called "the Creative Edge" on CKO
radio, a cross-Canada news and talkradio network Every Friday morning I
would pick some new invention, product or service and ask several simple
questions. How did you get from the conventional way to your new idea,
productor service? What's that an example of? (What's the generic concept
behind your idea?) and let's see if we can transfer that concept into an
unrelated area. After collecting over 100 generic opportunity windows or
scenarios, I ended up grouping them into workable clusters of 20 to 25
scenarios that fit into each quarter of a business cycle....yes there are
opportunity windows at the bottom of a recession as well.

Example of an Opportunity Scenario or Window:Spotting a trend paradox or
anomaly.

This works by clustering contradictory trends, identifying an anomaly and
creating a solution to the contradiction, that fits the opportunity
window. You can frame it as a sentance with the word "but" in the middle.

i.e.from a historic example: the first computers were a boom for office
productivity..but.. they were too big and clunky to take home every night
to do extra paperwork.

Opportunity window: ?

Reduce size and create laptop and notebook niche.

Taking this one step furthur, software is now available from companies
such as Invention Machine (Tech Opptimizer and Phenomenon) and Ideation,
focuses in on scientific and technical contradictions and provides
invention alogorithms.

What I have found is that some managers and executives love this formal
pro-active method and while other just can't or don't want to understand
it or consider it a poor use of their time.

I'd be interested in hearing what others are doing. Feel free to share
your methods, cognitive strategies with the list or reply to me directly
at wderzko@pathcom.com

Walter Derzko
Director Idea Lab
Toonto, Ontario
Canada
(416) 588-1122
wderzko@pathcom.com

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