The Creativity of Opportunity Maps
Opportunity used to knock. Now it’s visualized.
Above. Nursing Home of the Future Opportunity Map from Business Innovation Factory.
The classic opportunity map story comes from Herb Kelleher’s infamous napkin sketch. When he was brainstorming about how to beat the traditional hub-and-spoke-airlines, he grabbed a napkin and pen. Three dots represented Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. The simple sketch made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers.
In a recent BusinessWeek article on opportunity maps, Alonzo Canada, a principal at Jump Associates talked about a corporate retreat for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – a venture capital company with offices in Menlo Park and China. “Partner Bill Joy presented what he called "the map of grand challenges." This chart of multicolored squares tracked the progress of the venerable venture capital firm in identifying and investing in key categories of green technologies, including transportation, energy efficiency, electricity generation, energy storage, and more.
Joy also left blank spots on this chart that hinted at technologies that should be possible in the near future. For Kleiner Perkins, this map has come to represent a rough outline of tomorrow's clean energy economy. The firm now uses it as its investment playbook to help identify promising startups and stimulate universities and laboratories to create technologies that don't exist yet. “
Canada talks about how Nike used a similar approach at the start of the decade. Their Explore team was given challenge of helping Nike become a sports company. The team met the challenge by creating a map to identify the richest opportunities, define a strategy for growth, and set first steps toward a future vision. The map helped the team see product beyond shoes, such as sunglasses, watches, MP3 players, and sports apparel. The data on their map included consumer needs, societal and technology trends, and Nike's chief competitors, Adidas, Puma, and Reebok
When I was at last year’s Business Innovation Factory Conference, Matt Cottam, a team member of Nursing Home of the Future presented a variety of opportunity maps – visual launching pads for innovation.
The idea for visualizing business concepts isn’t new. But every few years, it gets reinvented and rebranded so that it has the patina of an innovation. Like A SWOT matrix it goes beyond words to create a portrait of relationships and connections that enable the viewer to see beyond words.
At Solution People in Chicago, Gerald Haman will often bring in an artist to visualize the ideation sessions. I do the same at my company when there’s a need to synthesize lots of diverse information or design is a key driver for the meeting.Companies should make opportunity maps a critical part of their planning process.
Even if all you have is a napkin.
Check out BIF's opportunity and experience maps @
Maps Courtesy of BIF. Business Innovation Factory, Providence RI
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