SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES The opportunities for innovation are everywhere. They exist in every aspect of every enterprise. Innovation can address products and services, systems and procedures and most importantly business models. Critically however most innovation does not involve focusing on products, services, systems, procedures or business models. While ‘efficiency’ innovations, stripping costs out might involve a focus […]

SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES The opportunities for innovation are everywhere. They exist in every aspect of every enterprise. Innovation can address products and services, systems and procedures and most importantly business models. Critically however most innovation does not involve focusing on products, services, systems, procedures or business models. While ‘efficiency’ innovations, stripping costs out might involve a focus on these things, ‘sustaining’ innovation and ‘disruptive’ innovation do not. Both sustaining innovation and the all-important disruptive innovation involve focusing on the market and more specifically the consumers and potential consumers of a product or service. Disruptive innovation in particular and to a lesser extent sustaining innovation involve, understanding who the markets are and: Unmet current needs Unmet future needs Barriers to purchase Barriers to effective use Compensating behaviour Constrained behaviour Understanding these factors enables an organisation to identify opportunities for innovation. Market research, social media research, consumer behaviour analyses and strategic observation represent some of…