IDENTIFYING BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH INNOVATION

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; tertiary students of entrepreneurship; academics and researchers with a special interest in entrepreneurship and focused on Asian region; policy and decision makers in the domain of entrepreneurship from Asia.

Key Features:

• Research based — The content of the book primarily comes from several longitudinal mixed methods research studies, funded by research grants, conducted amongst more than 350 Singapore entrepreneurs and thus has scientific basis
• Grounded in practical frameworks — The book presents several theories and frameworks, derived from rigorous empirical studies and the broader academic literature, that will help provide useful guiding frameworks for entrepreneurs and managers
• Practice orientation — The approach and presentation of the book is practice oriented and is therefore useful for practicing and aspiring entrepreneurs who need guidance to effectively execute a business idea