If there is a defining aspect of the entrepreneur, whether you are mounting a brave startup or launching new business lines in a consolidated company is its ability to identify new business opportunities and above all, to go further and put work to take advantage of them … but how? What options are there?
How Can We Detect New Business Ideas
As is often the clients I work ask me how they can identify business ideas and opportunities on which to build innovative model that we are all after, I decided to compile the main sources for identifying new opportunities that exist in my experience:
1. SEARCH Market Inefficiencies
Look at the markets aspects that can be improved and allow customers to better leverage their products or services. This means as increasing the information available to the client to make better decisions, make it easier to obtain a product or service by improving access, optimize processes for the relationship faster … etc. In other words, fix something in the market that we think is not working well enough.
2. New Market Segments
Periodically new customer segments appear, either because there are changes in demography or just a segment that was not representative becomes important … and acknowledge their existence and analyze their specific needs is usually a good starting point for new businesses.
3. Find Frustration Not Resolved
This is possibly one of the most powerful elements to identify viable business, not just talking about “needs” but of aspects in day to day to make a customer feel frustrated. It is usually the origin of products like “aspirin” and usually the best way to identify these frustrations is through personal experience or that of someone close suffering from such frustration.
4. New Products or Technologies
One element that transforms faster markets is the emergence of a new technology … because if we do a good analysis will find dozens of opportunities that may accompany it. This has happened with products like the iPad or GPS technology.
5. New Laws or Policies
The appearance of regulations, laws or policies is usually the germ of many products and services that are either “soothing” and facilitate adaptation to the law or are vaccine products through its recruitment can avoid future pain. They need to be very attentive to the emergence of new regulations and react very quickly once they are released.
Each of these points or strategies can help you identify new opportunities on which to build an innovative business model. but remember that what you decide is just a “candidate” idea, you still have to validate the assumptions on which it is based your idea to go outside.