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673 : STEP ONE – SEEKING AND SHAPING OPPORTUNITIES

as a supplier or customer where the market opportunity lies. However,
there is a risk that you may perceive the problem in conventional
industry terms – have you actually asked why systems need to operate
in a particular fashion? Are you aware of what innovations are being
developed in other lead markets? Do you know from first-hand
experience how products are actually used by the end-user or do you
just think you know? Are you aggregating the market at such a high
level that the different motivations of the different component segments
are being lost? Are your real competitors different to those identified by
industry custom and practice?

You should never forget that the greater your eventual knowledge of the
market and of its many angles, the greater your chances of creating a
range of opportunities for you to shape further. Having the luxury of
choice increases your chances of creating a truly innovative idea.

emotional detachment All these factors mean that you must

not become so wedded to your initial business idea or interpretation of
the market that you start to screen out other and possibly better ideas.

You need to develop detachment and remoteness so that, if needs be,
you can let go of your first ‘business baby’ without emotion in order to
replace it with another. The views of Tom Kelley of IDEO in connection
with prototypes are just as applicable to problem definitions when he
describes how his team tries not to get too attached to the first few
prototypes. The team knows that the prototypes will change because no
idea is so good that it cannot be improved upon. IDEO, one of the
world’s leading design consultancies, plans right from the start on a
series of improvements.51

In other words, every business idea remains tentative until the launch
has proved successful. It is quite likely that at every step of the idea
development process new information and insights or external events
will emerge which require you to cycle back to an earlier step. This
runs counter to the conventional model of innovation, where
implementation runs inexorably towards launch once the initial
‘creative phase’ has spawned the new product or service. As we saw
with Albrecht’s concept of ‘creative procrastination’, this continual
openness to review also challenges the western management
predisposition to action in preference to considered reflection and
analysis.