Opportunity Discovery
Explore, Learn and Iterate
What is Opportunity Discovery?
Opportunity Discovery expands your New Product Development efforts to fill the organisation’s pipeline with significant growth opportunities.
We work in close collaboration with your team to find new sources of value to grow the business. Through a structured process of exploration and development, we identify unmet needs that customers and competitors alike may be overlooking. In addition, we find new and emerging technologies that are changing perceptions of what’s possible. Opportunity Discovery is a rigorous and structured process that generates 100’s of new concepts. It shapes, focuses and socialises them into a handful you can act on. The result is discovering new business opportunities big enough to “move the needle” yet still a fit with company culture and competencies – opportunities that the organisation can say “yes” to. Opportunity Discovery brings operational excellence to innovation.
Why do Opportunity Discovery?
Companies are comfortable growing close to their core. Expanding beyond the core, where uncertainty predominates, is much more difficult.
This is, however, where really big, new opportunities typically reside. The Opportunity Discovery process helps large and successful organisations move into new areas as quickly as startups with a higher rate of success. It’s the missing piece that is needed to participate in a future that defies both prediction and plans.
Opportunity discovery is more than a project or a process, it’s a practice that helps the organisation operate “over the horizon” and discovery the big growth opportunities available.
Benefits of Opportunity Discovery?
Organisations pursue Opportunity Discovery to establish or enhance their growth pipeline. By adopting this approach an organisation can expect to…
- See the future more clearly — Spotting substantial unmet needs before others, and understanding the practical potential of emerging technologies before they become ubiquitous.
- Find a path to “yes” — Marshalling evidence to create and shape opportunities that can surmount the barriers large organisations put in the face of anything uncertain or disruptive to existing operations.
- Secure a growth footing — Demonstrating the ability to pursue transformational growth that’s aligned with the existing culture and capabilities responsible for today’s success.
How does Opportunity Discovery work?
Opportunity Discovery is a 3-9 month program pursued by a blended team of client and L Marks staff. L Marks provides program direction, resources, and the tools to help the entire team identify new opportunities. It fits into busy schedules and fixed budgets, recognizing that time and attention, not money, is the most scarce resource. Opportunity discovery focuses increasing amounts of attention on the most compelling opportunities while leaving others for possible future consideration. It’s a hands-on process with periodic, light-touch input from stakeholders and leadership to socialise opportunities and gain feedback. The process is highly adaptive so that it can fit the organisation’s experience, available people, timelines, and objectives for results.
Success story
Fortune 50 explores opportunities in the commercial solar energy market
A Fortune 50 company had an established and growing residential solar energy business and was looking to see if there were opportunities in the commercial market. The nature of this market, and the dynamics of demand, are very complex with multiple parties influencing whether or not a solar array gets installed on the roof of a commercial building.
We conducted several engagements across the commercial solar industry, gaining valuable insights into the distinct value propositions of each party involved. This process revealed the intricate dynamics among these various stakeholders, which significantly impact the decision-making process for installing solar arrays on commercial building roofs.
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