Innovate your way toward growth using practical, research-backed frameworks

The Art of Opportunity offers a path toward new growth, providing the perspective and methods you need to make innovation happen.  Written by a team of experts with both academic and industry experienceand a client roster composed of some of the worlds leading companiesthis book provides you with the necessary tools to help youcapture growth instead of chasing it.

The visual frameworks and research-based methodology presented inThe Art of Opportunity merge business design thinking and strategic innovation to help you change your growth paradigm.  Youll learn creative and practical methods for exploring growth opportunities and employ a new approach for identifying what opportunity looks like in the first place.  Put aside the old school way of focusing on new products and new markets, to instead applying value creation to find your new opportunity, craft your offering, design your strategy and build new growth ventures.

The changing business ecosystem is increasingly pushing traditional thinking out to pasture. New consumers and the new marketplace are demanding a profound adjustment to the way companies plan and execute growth strategies. This book gives you the tools to create your roadmap toward the new state of growth, and gain invaluable insight into a new way of thinking.

The Art of Opportunitywill help you to:

Your companys goal is to grow, and to turn non-customers into customers. The old ways are becoming less tenable and less cost-effective.The Art of Opportunity outlines the new growth paradigm and gives you a solid framework for putting new ideas into practice.

Marc Sniukas (Luxembourg; www.doujak.eu, www.businessmodelgallery.com, www.sniukas.com) is a partner at Doujak Corporate Development, a global consulting company that partners with CEOs, executive teams and owners of Fortune 500s and Hidden Champions to resolve the global strategic and organizational challenges they face; and co-founder of Business Model Gallery, the world's largest business model database. Marc partners with leadership teams and their organizations to discover opportunities for new growth and develop breakthrough strategies and innovative business models to transform their organizations. He has worked with major corporations across a wide range of industries in Europe, the US, Canada, Latin America, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UAE, Turkey, China and South Africa.
Besides his corporate work, Marc is currently an adjunct professor at CEDIM, where he teaches Innovation and Business Model Innovation within the Master of Business Innovation program, and is researching business model innovation as part of Manchester Business Schools DBA program. He is on the faculty at Thnk School for Creative Leadership with campuses in Amsterdam, Vancouver and Lisbon, and teaches business model innovation to about 100 international students per year.

Parker Lee (Portland, OR; www.xplane.com) currently serves as president and EVP of business development at XPLANE, a business design consultancy firm based in Portland, OR and Amsterdam that helps large organizations clarify, communicate, and achieve their goals.
Lee leads workshops, facilitates events, and provides consulting services on strategic business design to dozens of global clients, including Cisco, Microsoft, BP, Shell, Intel, Nike, Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), Autodesk, PayPal, Bank of America, The Economist, UNICEF, The World Bank, Genentech, AT&T, and Michelin. He has presented at numerous industry events, most recently the Association of Change Management Professionals annual conferences, and the Apple CEO Conference on The Future of Media.
Lee holds a bachelors degree in organization development and long range planning from the University of California, Davis. He is currently chairman of Portlands Business for Culture and the Arts.

Matt Morasky (Portland, OR; www.xplane.com) is a lead consultant at XPLANE, and an award-winning creative director, visual thinker, and educator. A fifteen-year veteran of the design and communications world, Morasky is an active advocate of Visual Thinking who combines his design thinking background with facilitation and visual problem solving practices to bring clarity to complex problems for clients including: American Express, British Telecom, Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, Elsevier, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Microsoft, The North Face, Proctor& Gamble, Red Bull, SwissCom, Vans, and Wrangler/Lee.
Morasky is currently based in XPLANE's Portland studio. Prior to that, he helped open XPLANEs Amsterdam office, where he lead creative effortsbuilding and collaborating with teams of consultants, project managers and design professionalsto help European clients navigate sticky changes. Morasky also established the Amsterdam Visual Thinking School (VTS), planning, promoting and delivering monthly VTS workshops for the creative and business communities. Most recently Matt developed and launched XPLANE's Designer Training Program, a multi-week, open-source course that introduces Visual Thinking (and design thinking) methodologies to senior level designers and problem-solvers.
A natural teacher, Morasky has taught and regularly guest lectures in many Northwest design schools. He has conducted workshops on Visual Thinking throughout Europe and the United States as well as spoken on the topic for audiences at the Frontiers of Interaction conference, Rome; University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and the Oregon Market Research Association.

1 ARTFUL INNOVATION

x Foreword

xii Acknowledgments

xv Introduction

xvi Readers Journey

4 WHAT IS STRATEGIC INNOVATION?

5 Traditional Strategic Management

6 Strategic Innovation

8 Where to Play: Find Your Opportunity

8 How to Play: Craft Your Strategy

9 How to Win: Create Value

10 WHAT IS BUSINESS DESIGN THINKING?

10 The Five Principles of Business Design Thinking

12 Getting Started

2 DISCOVER YOUR NEW GROWTH OPPORTUNITY

18 UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER AND NONCUSTOMER

20 Customer and Noncustomer

24 Understand Customer Needs, Expectations, and Choice

29 Identify Barriers to Consumption and Hurdles to Satisfaction

32 Inspiration: Cardinal Health

33 Inspiration: Klinik Hirslanden

34 How to Understand Your Customer and Noncustomer

34 Gather Information

35 Make Observations and Create Themes

35 Transform Findings into Insights

36 Inspiration: Ripple Effect Group

38 Activity: Persona Mapping

40 Activity: Create an Interview Guide

42 Activity: Customer Journey Mapping

44 Activity: Reveal Observation Headlines

46 UNDERSTAND YOUR FIRM

48 Resources and Capabilities

50 Inspiration: Caesars Palace

52 Resource Sparks: The Four Dimensions for Mapping and Assessing Resources

54 Methods to Understand Your Firm

56 Activity: Map Your Resources

58 Activity: Map Your Ecosystem

60 FRAME YOUR GROWTH INITIATIVE

62 Art of Opportunity Growth Types

62 Evolutionary Growth

63 Adjacent Growth

64 Breakthrough Growth

65 The Breakthrough Question

66 FRAME YOUR GROWTH OPPORTUNITY

66 Decision Making

67 Kinds of Decision-Making Strategies

68 Decision-Making Process

70 Activity: Create Your Growth Initiative Brief

72 Activity: Explore Your Opportunity Insights

74 Activity: Select Your Opportunity

76 VISUALIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY

78 Employ Storytelling and Visual Frameworks

82 Activity: Visualize Your Opportunity

3 CRAFT YOUR STRATEGY

88 THE ELEMENTS OF YOUR STRATEGY

90 Design Your Offering

90 Products

91 Services

91 Customer Experiences

92 Inspiration: Hilti

94 Offering Sparks: 10 Ways to Design a New Offering

106 Activity: Offering Brainstorm

108 Activity: Design Your Offering

111 Shape Your Business Model

112 The Static Perspective

112 The Dynamic Perspective

113 The Strategic Perspective

113 The Operational Perspective

113 Our Definition of a Business Model

114 Business Model Components

114 Activities

116 Resources

117 Sequence

118 Roles

120 Business Model in Practice

122 Inspiration: Eden McCallum

124 Inspiration: Klinik Hirslanden

126 Business Model Sparks: 8 Ways to Design a New Business Model

136 Activity: Visualize Your Current Business Model

138 Activity: Design Your New Business Model

140 Activity: Flip Your Business Model Assumptions

143 Structure Your Revenue Model

144 Revenue Streams

146 Pricing Mechanisms

148 Payment Mechanisms

150 Inspiration: ProSiebenSat.1

152 Inspiration: Fahrenheit 212

153 Inspiration: 826 Valencia

154 Revenue Model Sparks to Consider

156 Activity: Revenue Model Card Sort

158 SET YOUR STRATEGY: CREATING VALUE

161 Creating Value

162 Customer Value

164 Firm Value

166 Ecosystem Value

168 Inspiration Summary: Value Propositions by Company

170 Activity: Set Your Strategy

172 VISUALIZE YOUR STRATEGY

173 Final Note on Crafting Your Strategy

174 Activity: Visualize Your Strategy

4 LAUNCH YOUR NEW GROWTH BUSINESS

182 THE THREE PHASES OF A NEW GROWTH BUSINESS

185 The Inception Phase: Validating Your Opportunity And Piloting Your Strategy

186 Three Steps for Validation and Piloting

192 How to Validate Your Pilot

192 Activities for Presenting Your Validation Data

192 In-House Observations

192 Field Observations

193 Simulation

193 Interviews

194 Research

194 Small-Scale Experimentation

194 Additional Resources to Explore

196 Activity: What to Test

198 Activity: How to Test

200 Learning from Your Pilot

200 Achieving Success

201 Encountering Challenges

201 Gaining Insights

202 The Evolution Phase: Adapting Your Strategy

204 Inspiration: ProSiebenSat.1

206 Inspiration: Fahrenheit 212

210 Activity: Start, Stop, Change, Continue

212 Activity: Design Next Steps

214 Visualize Your Growth Plan

216 Activity: Visualize Your Growth Plan

218 The Diffusion Phase: Scaling Up Your Business

220 Operational Challenges

222 Establish Clear Roles and Responsibilities

222 Build an Organizational Culture of Sharing, Listening, Collaboration, Experimentation, and Support

223 Take a Holistic, Systems Approach to Planning and Executing the Scaling-up Process

223 Build a Plan and Employ a Process of Regular and Rigorous Review and Adjustment

223 Create a Clear and Simple Way to Track and Measure Your Progress

5 MASTERING THE ART: BUSINESS DESIGN THINKING

228 WHAT IS BUSINESS DESIGN THINKING?

229 Foundation of Business Design Thinking

230 Process and Methodology

232 PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS DESIGN THINKING

232 1. Keep a Human-Centered Focus

234 2. Think Visually and Tell Stories

235 3. Work and Co-Create Collaboratively

236 4. Evolve through Active Iteration

237 5. Maintain a Holistic Perspective

238 Inspiration: Oracle

240 Inspiration: ExactTarget

242 A NEW WAY OF WORKING

244 Inspiration: Microsoft

254 Notes

256 About the Authors

259 Index