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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS68
increasing the chances of success But you must persevere
with this opportunity-shaping step because investment in time and
resource now increases the chances of successful implementation.
Further, if you have to recycle back to this step, you will already have
generated considerable background information and insight which you
can revisit in order to generate alternative definitions of the
opportunity.
Lack of clear definition of the intended business opportunity is one of
the biggest reasons for business failure. The techniques outlined later in
this chapter will help you improve your opportunity-seeking and
shaping skills and improve your ability to develop a degree of
remoteness from your initial definition of the business idea.
lack of clear definition of the intended
business opportunity is one of the biggest
reasons for business failure
The outcome of this first step will be a single high-powered definition
of the market opportunity, or at most several, to which the idea
generation techniques described in the next chapter can be fruitfully
applied.
total immersion in the market The important factor at
this step is to become totally immersed in the market, unearthing
aspects which you had not previously considered, challenging all your
assumptions and using information to generate further ideas about
which you gather more information and insight. This immersion, using
creative as well as analytical techniques, will help you develop a
variety of perspectives on the market and the opportunities which it
presents.
The problem or opportunity as you first perceive it may not resemble
the problem as you finally perceive it. You need to open up your mind
to as many potentially relevant facts and insights as you can so that you
can improve the final perception. Time invested now is time well spent.
As the President of Harvard Business School is reported to have once
said: ‘If you thought that knowledge was expensive, you should try
ignorance.’