To make the most of your business opportunities, look for value, actuality and practicality, in that ord

No one gets blamed for the opportunities they do not take. Everyone gets blamed for making mistakes. So the sensible policy is not to take initiatives but just to 'coast along'. You do a competent job and you get promoted because people have confidence in your ability to do a competent job. It is left to the captain of the ship and the navigator to decide where the ship is going. You just keep the ship 'going'.

In business the prevailing idiom is 'maintenance and problem solving'. Everyone sees his or her job as 'doing what needs to be done'. That is maintenance. If there is a problem you set about solving the problem. Then you carry on with maintenance until the next problem comes along. This idiom is valid when the economy is expanding. You just keep expanding with it. But in a competitive world there may be an oversupply of goods and services. Maintenance is no longer enough. There is now a need for value creation. That means innovation and the design of new concepts.

WHOSE BUSINESS IS THIS?
The ship analogy suggests that the owners, the captain and the navigator, should be setting the direction. This means senior executives, the strategy team and the R&D department. So should everyone else just keep going with maintenance and changing direction as required?

There are new concepts that will produce new products and services. There are new concepts that will affect delivery of traditional products and services (like selling insurance or computers via the Web). There are new concepts that will affect the functioning of an organisation: making things simpler, less expensive and more effective, etc. Where are the new concepts to come from?

COPYING
Wait until others develop new concepts and when these have proved to be successful then step in with a 'me too'. This way you avoid failure, and you save all the costs of developing the market. Sometimes it works, but often it does not, because the first in the field has established a strong position (like Sony with the Walkman).

SPECIAL DEPARTMENT
This means the strategy department, R&D, marketing, etc. They are charged with doing some 'new thinking'. It is their business to generate new ideas. This works tolerably well, but may not be sufficient. The training of such groups in the formal and deliberate techniques of lateral thinking can enhance their creative ability, but even this may not be enough.

BRAINPOWER OF EMPLOYEES
This is a largely unused asset because employees are just supposed to do what they are supposed to do. Three things are needed here. The first is the training of employees to regard themselves as 'thinkers' and to be able to use deliberate methods of creative thinking. The second is the motivation of these people. This means making it clear that new ideas are wanted and will be listened to. The third thing is the need to focus this mental energy on specific needs. This means setting up a 'Creative Hit List'.

HIGHLY CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS
It is very unlikely that a highly creative individual would want to work for a single corporation because this would be something of a restriction. So this means outsourcing creativity to individuals or teams.

NEW TECHNOLOGY
At times a new technology almost directly creates a new direction - for example, digital cameras. Usually, however, the new technology creates opportunities. Such opportunities have to be turned into products or services through creative design. Even today the full value offered by the Internet has not been realised. Two-thirds of the revenue generated by the Internet comes from pornography.

EVOLUTION
Sometimes things evolve steadily and gradually turn into a new concept. This is what most organisations hope for. New ideas will evolve painlessly without having to take any risk. If you are starving you can starve very efficiently - but you are still starving. If an organisation is slowly dying because of a lack of new ideas, then the efficiency within that organisation can be great, but the general trend remains the same.

Some organisations are reluctant to lead. They want to coast along and seek to be very sensitive to the world around. They are on the alert for changes in the market, for changes in technology and for changes in products or services. Then they seek to respond to these changes with 'me too' behaviour. It is hard, and even unfair, to criticise such behaviour, but it does mean that the organisation is operating at well below its potential. In most organisations the chief executive has got there through being 'very sound' and competent. This does not necessarily mean having the ability to foster or develop new ideas. Problem-solvers do well in organisations, but problem-solvers are not innovators.

As everything else becomes a commodity, the idea component in business is going to become ever more important. In my experience, this aspect is not very well handled at the moment. The reason may be that for the last fifteen years the emphasis has been on house-keeping: cost-cutting, down-sizing, quality, etc. This emphasis was necessary and would always improve the bottom line - but it does not generate new ideas.

When does a new idea start to make sense? There is probably a need to see three things almost simultaneously.

1. The idea must deliver value. If it is to compete with existing ideas, then at least some aspect of the value must be greater than that delivered by these other ideas (this may be convenience, price, choice, etc.). Value is not always obvious, and a person with low value sensitivity might not be able to see the value in an idea which is really a good one. It does not have to offer 'in your face' value to be a good idea.
2. The idea must be 'actual'. This means you must be able to visualise the idea 'actually' happening. This means that the needed methods and mechanisms are already available. The new idea can be fed through existing channels. Once it has been decided to use the idea, then there is nothing to stop the fantasy from 'happening'. The idea is not an incomplete dream or fantasy, but something real and 'actual'.
3. The idea must be 'practical'. This is where costs, legality, resources, motivation, etc. all come in. The idea might be actual and might deliver value, but if it is not 'practical' for a particular organisation that idea will not be used and will not make sense. The term 'actual' refers to an idea and its implementation. The term 'practical' refers to the organisation that would have to put the idea into practice.

Far too often people start with the practical and then dismiss ideas which do not seem practical at first glance. It is far better to use the order given here. If the idea can deliver value, then you look for actuality. If both are present, then you assess for practicality. If the idea has been seen to have value, then you work harder to see how it can be made practical.