OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION: A TAXONOMY OF DELIBERATE APPROACHES AND TRIAL OF ONE
Karl H. Vesper, Phil Shragge, W. Ed McMullan · Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship · 1989
This paper explores options for teaching about how to find potentially viable ideas for new ventures. It (1) briefly surveys approaches to opportunity identification used to date, (2) illustrates and contrasts their application in two different opportunity identification courses, and (3) presents results of an experiment with one particular approach tried in one of the courses. The experiment involved systematic search through contacting other people and asking them for venture ideas. Principal findings indicated this approach produced an average of 2.5 ideas per contact, and the cost was on average 7.7 minutes per idea obtained. Typically, students' confidence in the approach was higher after trying it, and 85 per cent said they expected to use it more in the future. An experimental hypothesis that this approach would yield a higher fraction of commercial, as opposed to consumer, product and service ideas than would a self-searching approach was not supported. There was some indication that the technique is refinable.