OUR APPROACH

• How can we find uncharted, "white space" opportunities with tremendous growth potential?
• We want to get into a new market space, but where do we begin?

How we respond

We have a great deal of experience working alongside companies to help them use the patterns of disruptive innovation to systematically spot and nurture high-potential opportunities. Although each project is different, a typical engagement involves the following steps:

Phase I: Identify specific domains. We conduct analysis, utilize our screening tools, and work with the client to pick the 3 to 4 domains that warrant deeper attention.

Phase II: Develop specific opportunities. We review analyst reports, interview front-line company representatives, interview industry experts, scour patent databases, interact with customers, assess technologies, and analyze individual companies.  At the end of this phase, we have developed at least 3 to 4 attractive opportunities in each domain. Some of these opportunities might be licensing / acquisition targets, while others might be “white space” opportunities for new business creation. For each opportunity we use our pattern recognition skills and proprietary tools to develop a report with a suggested plan to test key assumptions and reduce risks. At the end of this phase we typically have a meeting with some kind of review committee where we decide the specific opportunities that the company wants to take forward.

Phase III: Take identified opportunities forward. After the review committee meeting, we work alongside our client to take designated opportunities forward. We do this the way a venture capitalist would, following the principles of “emergent strategy,” designing and executing experiments to address critical assumptions. This phase can continue for months as we take identified opportunities through to market readiness.

An engagement of this nature will typically last from two to six months, depending on the size and diversity of the target markets.