How to Find Business Opportunities

A professor of Lateral Thinking once said: " An opportunity is as real as an ingredient in business as raw material, labour or finance but it only exits when you can see it".

In business one must draw up an opportunity checklist. In an opportunity checklist, one must first identify problems such as:
• What made you mad today?
• What took too long?
• What was the cause of any complaints?
• What was misunderstood?
• What cost too much?
• What was wasted?
• What was too complicated?
• What is just plain silly?
• What job took too many people?
• What job involved too many actions?
• What inspired you?

Problems are often seen as barriers to a growth of a business when in fact it can be viewed as an opportunity to boost the growth of a business.

 

To identify sources of opportunity one:
• must look at his/her business from the perspective of a customer.
• keep up with the changes in economic, social and political environments
• look at the mega trends that are happening around them
• look at the impact of privatization
• look at the technological developments
• look at problems faced by others for example the older generation the grey power
• must have a network of contacts
• must continuously read newspapers, magazines, journals, advertisements as they tell you more about your competitor
• must take advantage of local knowledge.