Identifying opportunities

The opportunity mindset

This video is all about the opportunity mindset and appreciating the importance of opportunities. Adopting this mindset means you’re able to gain value from the process of exploring opportunities. This exploration involves really understanding the opportunity and audience that is impacted by it. It should use a human-centred approach to design to focus on creating value for this audience. The opportunity mindset requires you to be open to discovery and possibilities and not solutions-focused.

Note that a human-centred approach is one that focuses on the audience you’re designing for by putting their needs and desires first, followed by focusing on the feasibility and viability of the value that the opportunity is creating. 

When we talk about responses to opportunities we mean a desirable response to an opportunity is something that the audience actually wants; a feasible response is something that can be built into a product, service or process and a viable response is one that can generate profit or be run sustainably without losing money.

Explore what it means to have an opportunity mindset. (2.42) Transcript

Opportunities drive innovation and entrepreneurship. The desire to address opportunities is what leads people to develop life changing products, launch new businesses and to change the way the world works. Now that you’re starting to understand what an opportunity is and what that means in the innovation context you must also understand why opportunities are so important. Opportunities are important for a few different reasons. Primarily, their value comes from the process of exploring the opportunity to determine if it is actually an opportunity to create value. Exploring an opportunity is about really understanding it. You need to explore the situation and circumstances that have led to this opportunity and make sure you appreciate the context it sits within. A key element of this exploration is identifying the audience that is impacted by this opportunity and want it to be addressed. This will help you determine who you can create value for and will position you to understand how that value can be created. Another reason that opportunities are important is that they give you the chance to use a human-centred approach to design. Human-centred design is all about focusing on the audience by putting their needs and desires first. The initial step of the human-centred design approach is determining desirability. What do people want addressed? What responses will they engage with or ignore? This will keep you focused on creating something that people actually want and will benefit from in some way – therefore, ensuring you create value…. Once you understand what the audience desires, you can think about the other key pieces of the puzzle. These are viability, if the value can actually generate profit, and feasibility, if the value can be built into a product, service or process. At the centre of these three elements is the sweet spot – if you can develop a response to an opportunity that is desirable, feasible and viable, it’s likely to be successful. Finally, rather than being too-solution focused as you are with ideas, or frustrated as you are with problems, exploring opportunities puts you into a positive mindset where you’re optimistic and open to exploration. This is known as the opportunity mindset.