Behind every successful venture is the story of a business opportunity that was recognized for its potential worth and profitably developed before others realized that potential. Identifying and assessing opportunity are two critical steps that a company must take to grow and sustain their competitive advantages. It is equally important for an entrepreneur to undertake these tasks before starting a new venture. Sometimes, an entrepreneur stumbles upon an opportunity. While serendipity may occasionally play a role in identifying an opportunity, more often it is a systematic analysis of the business environment that is required. How does one identify an opportunity that is worth exploiting?
Entrepreneurs are obsessed with opportunity. Having an entrepreneurial mindset would help established businesses to successfully identify and exploit opportunities. Entrepreneurs look for changes in the political, economical, social, and technological environment that disrupt the equilibrium in the market place and consequently create new business opportunities. Similarly, customers’ dissatisfaction with the ability of existing products and services to meet their needs indicates an opportunity that begs for exploitation. Further, competitors’ inability to adequately serve their customers sometimes opens the door for other firms to enter the market. A company should look for an opportunity that meshes well with its core competency. For an entrepreneur, personal expertise is an excellent source for a new opportunity. While an entrepreneur may have no shortage of “ideas,” and may think passionately about those ideas, it pays to assess an opportunity before spending the time and effort to start a business only to see the idea fall flat with target customers.
This session will develop a framework for analyzing a market opportunity. The objective is to understand the issues and concepts used to define and assess market opportunities.
About The Speaker:
Dr Abdul Ali
Associate Professor of
Marketing and Entrepreneurship,
Babson College
Dr. Abdul Ali’s research, teaching, and consulting focus on entrepreneurial marketing, new product management, marketing analytics, marketing strategy and marketing high-tech products. His work has appeared in Management Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Managerial and Decision Economics, Journal of Business Research, and Marketing Letters. He and his two co-authors published a book entitled, A Casebook for Business Statistics: Laboratories for Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons. He also co-authored a chapter each on Entrepreneurial Marketing in two books edited by William Bygrave and Andrew Zacharakis. He has also written chapters on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the 2008, 2009 and 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor United States Executive Report. Dr. Ali is an Area Editor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship for the Journal of Asia Business Studies since Fall, 2006.
Dr. Ali has taught in many executive education programs involving executives, business person, and academicians from Ecuador, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Thailand, U.K., and the US. He obtained an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, an MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University. Earlier, Dr. Ali served as Chair of the Marketing Division for six years (2000-2006) at Babson College.
The Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE) brings senior executives and high potential leaders from all over the world for executive education to discover new dimensions in Leadership Development, Good Governance, Telecom Training, HR Performance and various other Leadership and Management practices to help them grow in their business careers. MILE is a CSR initiative of Savola Group’s CSR Programs and grew to be a collaborative initiative aims to attract the contributions and support of many other companies, academic institutions, research & consulting organizations and professional groups.
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