Identifying business opportunities - establishing a business circle

One of the most critical steps in determining a winning business strategy is assessing the range of opportunities that are available to your business and which of these opportunities you should pursue.

One of the tools that can be really effective is the “business circle”. A business circle plots out the opportunities from the core of a business to the no-go zones.

Step 1. Decide what is central to the business at this point in time. Try and describe it in less than 20 words. Write it down and draw a circle around it.

Step 2. Decide what other products or services you could offer that are directly linked to the core of your business. Make sure they leverage your current business skills and competencies. Keep them simple. The implementation of these new products and services should be achieved within a year of the plan. Write these around the inner circle. Draw another circle around these ideas.

Step 3. Now think about the products and services that would fit well with your current business but are significantly more difficult to achieve. These products and services will require resources – time, human or financial resource, and will require you and your business to acquire new skills or knowledge. You may need to change the way you manage your business to establish these new offerings. They are challenging, risky opportunities – that need to be carefully assessed. These products and services could take between two to four years to establish. Write these down outside circle two. Draw another circle.

Step 4. Finally start to identify the areas of business that should not be entertained. This is called the no-go zone. A no-go product or service would undermine the core of the business and possible destroy the business model.

Now that you have established the business circles, it’s time to sit back and decide which of the ideas are worth evaluating and then pursuing - and which ideas you can stop thinking about!