If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or a newly initiated one trying to figure out the path to traverse in the course of an uncertain entrepreneurial journey, then this book is for you. If you are a manager looking to innovate and improve your offerings, you will likely find some useful tips in this book.
This book aims to guide entrepreneurs and managers on how to go about identifying business opportunities through innovation. It presents lessons and insights gleaned from original research conducted amongst hundreds of global entrepreneurs, that explored how they went about identifying business opportunities and developing effective business strategies. Besides appropriate business examples from around the world that illustrate some important principles of ideation and execution, we also discuss how companies transform themselves in the face of challenges and difficulties.
The book would equip aspiring entrepreneurs and business managers as well as students of entrepreneurship with the necessary skill sets to emerge successful in this turbulent economic climate. Effective tips on identifying potential business opportunities, systematic steps for developing business ideas, as well as strategies for sustaining a business through the adoption of emerging technologies are covered with examples in the book.
In this pandemic ridden times, this book would no doubt be a useful resource for entrepreneurs and managers looking to ride out the key challenges and emerge as survivors.
Contents:
A Model of Business Opportunity Identification:
Looking Inward
Looking Outward
Looking Beyond
Key Actors in Opportunity Identification:
Customers
Suppliers
Competitors
Sharing Within the Network of BoI Actors
Design Thinking:
What is Design Thinking?
Focus on the Problems
Principles of Design Thinking
Phases in Design Thinking
The Good Kitchen
Creating Opportunities Through Resource Combination & Bricolage:
Combining Existing Resources in New Ways
Transform Goals as You Combine Resources
Exploiting Contingencies and Creating Options:
Contingency Exploitation
Options Generation
Continuous Updating of Goals
Partnerships and Alliances:
Importance of Partnerships
Partnership Selection Strategies
Partnering Models
Partnership Trends Post-COVID-19 Changes
Digital Transformation:
Digital Technologies What are These?
Affordances and Characteristics of Digital Technologies
An Integrative Case FarmFriend
Use of Digital Technologies Challenges
Broader Trends and Business Opportunities:
Demographic Changes
Changing Attitudes to Work
Platform Mediated Trust Rise of the Sharing Economy
Sustainability Focus
Post-Pandemic Trends
Exploiting Trends
Emerging Business Models:
Business Models
Product-as-a-Service Model
Monetizing Existing Resources
Improving Current Business Models
Pandemic Business Models
Surviving the Pandemi:
Impact of COVID-19
The Pandemic Archetypes
Coping Strategies
Readership: Aspiring and practicing young entrepreneurs; managers of organisations interested in innovation;