Discovering Business Opportunities
Business opportunities exist all around us, every moment of the day we come across business opportunities, however, our abilities to identify them and the confidence to seize them differs. The most important is to be able to identify them.
Business opportunities are high probabilities to offer a service or sell a product to satisfy identified needs of people, families, and a society, in return for money. Yes, money is the result of taking advantage of business opportunities. However, the focus should be on providing great service or authentic and valuable products first before money starts rolling in.
Distinction between a business idea and a business opportunity.
Business ideas are not business opportunities. A business idea is a clue or feeling that a certain solution, service or product will satisfy needs which for which customers are willing to pay for.
No matter how cutting-edge, modernistic a business idea may seem to be if customers are not willing to pay for it, it is not a business opportunity. The willingness of potential customers to pay for your solution to their problems is what translates a business idea into a business opportunity.
Your customers must see the value in your business idea for it to become an opportunity.
Sources of business ideas
The general conception of the source of ideas is a moment of creative insight. That moment when it suddenly hits you. The “Aha! moment”. Well, it’s true, but not all the time.
Business ideas come through a more practical approach. You should be more specific in your search for needs by focusing on a particular business industry. Usually, there are always unsatisfied needs in business industries, even in well advanced and mature industries.
The creation of new solutions in industries also creates more unsatisfied needs. The key is to source for unsatisfied needs. Business opportunities lie within unsatisfied needs.
I have put together a small list of the sources of business opportunities.
1. Discovering unsatisfied needs in a market or industry.
2. Take an existing product to a virgin market.
3. Convert a free service or product into a paid/premium service by improving it.
4. Convert work experience to a service.
5. Convert a hobby to a profit-yielding venture.
6. Be an angel (A business investor).
7. Invent new IT solutions.
Every day keep your eye open to observe needs in your community, you will discover there are so many needs that can be satisfied by creating simple and cost-effective solutions.
