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Blog / MGT 465 Week 1 Individual Article Review

MGT 465 Week 1 Individual Article Review

2016-08-20

Identifying Business Opportunities

Gundry, L. K., & Kickul, J. R. (2007). Entrepreneurship strategy changing patterns in      new venture creation, growth, and reinvention. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE       Publications, Inc

Recognizing business opportunities is a difficult task which seems to have some of the simplest solutions.  In order to recognize business opportunities one must first recognize the need for the particular business, product, or service. According to (Gundry & Kickul, 2007) the best means for identifying opportunities is to identify the needs of the market and the consumer.  This identification process is actually conducted in the simplest manner by asking questions.  The following list of questions can be used to identify new business opportunities.

  1. What frustrates customers in the industry in question?
  2. What should businesses be creating, in the industry in question, that is currently not being made?
  3. What are the customer needs, today, in the near future, and in the long-term?
  4. What is your experience as a customer and what would you desire out of the industry?
  5. How would you run the business differently than what is currently being done?
  6. What are the beliefs concerning the industry about what is possible and not possible? Can this be changed?

Asking questions in this manner allows the entrepreneur to investigate business potentials and formulate new ideas. These questions should in no way be limited to what has been stated, but rather the more in depth the questioning the better. The basic idea in questioning a particular industry, product, or service is that it allows the entrepreneur to discover the unknown niche. For example, is opening a new pizza parlor in New York City a wise decision? Perhaps not because of the competition, however; opening a mobile pizza parlor in New York City that delivers 24 hours might be a new niche.

One can see how questioning can lead to new ideas and new marketing niches. Without questioning in this manner or challenging the status quo it is near impossible to identify new business opportunities. This makes questioning products, services, and markets vital to successful entrepreneurship.   

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