Opportunities and the Opportunity Analysis Canvas

"There is nothing more powerfull than an idea whose time has come". - Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and dramatist

At the time of this writing, this is the number of resutls when searching for business plan books on Amazon.com. As we need the business idea before writing the business plan, aspiring entrepreneurs require insight and direction on how to identify and analyze entrepreneurial ideas. This book stands alone in its focus on integrating entrepreneurial thinking, seeing and acting upon entrepreneurial opportunities. It will help you find that idea from which to build a company. 

What is an opportunity?

In this context, the term opportunity refers to the potential to create a new venture. This can be a fro-profit company, a non-profit company, a venture within an established company or organization, or any related venture that creates value for the customers and the owners of the venture. 

Why are there millions of missed opportunities?

In retrospect, we all recognize good opportunities. It's easy to see the successes of others, and believe that we could have achieved similar success had we acted on our own past ideas. Our decisions, however, are of most value in the present and not in hindsight. 

Each year over one million students enroll in entrepreneurship courses worldwide. Estimates suggest that less than 2% of these students actually launch a business. Why are so few students launching businesses? While many are interested in simply learning skills for future use, a significant number desire to launch a new venture in the near term. This mismatch of entrepreneurial ambitions versus actually launching ventures exists for students of all ages. 

What's missing?

There is the need for something new, something different, that helps us identify and analyze entrepreneurial opportunities. For aspiring entrepreneurs, new tools are necessary to develop the ideas that can lead to effective business planning and successful ventures. 

Is the business model approach the key?

The business model is the precursor to the business plan. The emergence of business model courses  and competitions in universities, in lieu of prematurely writing business plans, are steps in the right direction. The focus of these new business model courses and activities is to engage aspiring entrepreneurs in customer discovery early. An emphasis is placed on testing their major hypotheses of the business model before investing significant effort and capital into creating the business plan or the business itself. 

While this is a viable approach, and a valuable lesson in entrepreneurship education, business models can only begin to take shape after a new venture idea is formulated. Customer discovery requires having a product or service concept to test.

What is the Opportunity analysis Canvas?

The Opportunity Analysis Canvas is based on my experiences of teaching over 600,000 students and advising hundreds of companies including multiple Inc. 500 award winners. 

The canvas began nearly eight years ago with my doctoral dissertation titled "Educating entrepreneurship students about opportunity discovery: A psychosocial development model for enhanced decision-making". While this dissertation title may sound complicated, the basic idea is that before drafting business models and writing business plans, aspiring entrepreneurs need to see and think about problems and solutions differently than others. 

As I explored this topic of entrepreneurial opportunity analysis, I recognized a pattern that could be identified. With that identification and understanding, I saw that it is a process that could be taught.

Before beginning this book, over many years at the University of Maryland, I tested various ideas and approaches of teaching. These activities engaged thousands of my students in readings, assingments, projects, and mentoring that led to dramatic improvement in their entrepreneurial opportunity identification and analysis skills. 

The outcome of this opportunity analysis journey, and the proven success of its teaching, is this book. It is my hope that by understanding the principles and patterns of the Opportunity Analysis Canvas you will become more effective in identifying and analysing entrepreneurial opportunities, and realizing your personal and professional goals. 

The Opportunity Analysis Canvas is a new tool for identifying and analyzing entrepreneurial ideas. Structured as nine-step experience, the canvas is segment into: thinking entrepreneurially with an entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial motivation, and entrepreneurial behavior; seeing entrepreneurially with industry condition, industry status, macroeconomic change, and competition; and acting entrepreneurially with value innovation and opportunity identification. 

The Opportunity Analysis Canvas

Retrieved from: The Opportunity Analysis Canvas - Edition 2.0

Without the idea for the product or service, neither business model nor customer discovery can begin. It is this first step of defining the idea that the Opportunity Analysis Canvas aims to fulfill.