Week 1 Recognizing and Shaping Opportunities
Ideas and Opportunities
· An entrepreneur might get an idea for a new venture by seeing patterns that suggest a solution to a compelling market need – one that customers may not even have identified.
· An entrepreneur turns an idea into an opportunity by crafting a business model that identifies a strategy targeting a market segment with a solution that will attract customers, partners, investors, key employees, and other resources that will be needed to enter and gain traction in the market and create value for all stakeholders.
· This value proposition will also include cash flow forecasts that reflect the entrepreneur’s assumptions for how the business model will generate cash flow once it is implemented.
· Entrepreneurial opportunity: The chance to meet a market need, interest, or want through a creative combination of resources to deliver superior value.
· Opportunities begin as unformed ideas that are shaped and refined over time.
· Opportunity recognition:
· (1) Sending or perceiving an unmet market need or a new technology that could meet a need that has yet to be identified.
· (2) Discovering the fit between market needs and capabilities and resources available to the entrepreneur.
· (3) Creating a product, service, or a hybrid product/service “solution” that can be delivered to a specific market to address a specific need while generating value for all stakeholders.
The Path to Entrepreneurship
· Entrepreneurs identify patterns as they engage deeply with others and are able to apply what they are learning to meet a need within a market, at times before the potential customers in that market even recognize that need.
· An idea is just the first step. The idea needs to be shaped into a viable business opportunity by engaging with potential customers, advisors, and experts and by searching for information that could help them link their understanding of a compelling market need to a unique and compelling solution.
· The focus must be narrowed to find a market entry point that could be tested, refined, and then used as a platform for developing the business to its full potential.
· Even after extensive market research and the development of a detailed business plan, some of the assumptions underlying the initial business may be wrong, requiring the entrepreneur to revise important elements after launch.
Recognizing Opportunities
· “Intuition has long been viewed as a less effective approach to critical reasoning when compared to the merits of analytical thinking. Yet as society and businesses place a greater emphasis on the speed and effectiveness of decision-making, the intuitive approach has been identified as an increasingly important tool.” – Michael Pratt
· Two decision-making forms of thinking
· (1) intuitive/gut thinking creative, associative, fast
· Generating ideas, recognize trends/patterns
· (2) analytical thinking controlled, rational, relatively slow
· Shaping the opportuni...
