IPM Cultivate Business Opportunities

Determine Strategy and Competency Alignment-Gate
Since resources are limited, product managers are forced to filter out the best market opportunities. This is not based just on their business case, but also how well aligned they are to strategy and core-competencies of the organization. Taking the best business cases, begin to funnel the list of market opportunities further, by analyzing each one to see how well aligned to strategy it is, the effect it will have on competitive advantage and how well aligned to core-competencies it is. This analysis will determine which market opportunities will have the least risk for your organization. Defining strategy and competency alignment of market opportunities helps your organization to decrease risk and increase sustainability.

Sponsor Value Alignment
A sponsor gate enables product managers to identify the must meet criteria of product investment sponsors for market opportunity selection and alignment opportunities. No product or market opportunity can be capitalized if there is no sponsor supporting the investment. Take the funneled list of market opportunities, and analyze each one to see if it aligns to the sponsor’s values, such as profit focused, growth focused, ethics, or environmental concerns. If a sponsor only is interested in certain demographics and will only support environmental friendly business ventures, then opportunities outside those segments or that would not help the environment will not be of interest. By defining the values that market opportunities need to align to, product management teams can focus on only opportunities that are likely to be selected. This increases their efficiency in the opportunity selection process and decreases unnecessary costs associated with wasted time spent on misaligned market opportunities.

Select Business Opportunities
To determine the best use of product investment cash flow, organizations need to identify the business opportunities available and determine the best ones for the company. Selecting business opportunities is the process of selecting the appropriate market opportunities based on business drivers. Use information gathered to compute the ROI of each market opportunity and the likelihood of achieving the ROI. Looking at corporate and product strategy is also important in the selection of business opportunities to make sure that they implement the desired innovation strategy. The selection of business opportunities based on business drivers will have a positive impact on all of the business drivers. The most obvious are the ability to increase revenue, increase sustainability, and decrease investment risk.

Define Product Features
By defining features a company determines the technical approach to solving a market problem and the business model that will realize the business opportunity. Features are the solutions that need to be communicated, designed, and delivered. Based on the business opportunities, select the problems or needs to be solved. Determine the different possible solutions to these problems. This could be a change to your business model, or a change to the technology itself. Determine information such as market access, competitive imitation, and end product benefit for each feature. The main purpose of features is to realize business opportunities so they will lead to increased revenue and sustainability, a decrease in change risk, or an increase in client endorsement of the company/product.

Validate & Prioritize Features
To have a successful product, we must validate that the solution will actually solve the market problem. Using validation surveys we can ensure that the proposed features will solve the problems, and also determine their priority. Determine the priority or importance of each feature based on gathered information. Determine the innovation type of each feature based on change to business model and technology. The innovation types are incremental, semi-radical business driven, semi-radical technology driven, and radical. Prioritize and validate feature priorities based on criteria such as cost, benefit, market access, and innovation type. Validate with customers that the proposed features will solve the market problems. This will increase client endorsement because they will know that you understand and can solve their problems. It will also increase sustainability of the product.

Define Potential Roadmaps
Many opportunities are based on timing, so a product roadmap determining when certain features will be delivered is extremely important. The potential roadmaps may target different segments or strategies so it is important to develop multiple scenarios for comparisons. Take different roadmap themes and assign features to multiple potential roadmaps. Take these potential roadmaps and compare them to determine which roadmaps are most attractive and aligned with your corporate strategy. Analyze the different roadmaps and categorize them into one of the two innovation strategies; either a Play To Win (PTW) or Play Not To Lose (PNTL) strategy. Defining potential roadmaps helps to decrease risks by accurately defining the innovation type. It also will increase product sustainability by ensuring that a continued competitive advantage will occur thru the long-term roadmap.

Enforce Sponsor Constraints
Product managers need to ensure that all potential roadmaps meet the sponsor constraints before going forward. Take the list of potential roadmaps, and analyze each one to see if it meets the sponsor’s constraints, such as target market segments, environmental constraints, or expected ROIs. If a sponsor only is interested in certain market segments or demographics, then roadmaps that are not of value to those segments should not be selected. By defining the constraints put on roadmaps by sponsors, and ensuring that they are met, product management teams can narrow the list of potential roadmaps to a smaller more manageable number. This increases their efficiency in the roadmap selection process and decreases unnecessary costs associated with wasted time spent on misaligned roadmaps.

Determine Resource & Asset Availability
When determining which roadmap to select for a given product, Product Managers need to assess the availability of resources and assets to determine which roadmaps are even feasible. Each product management team must assess the total available resources for this product, and they must assess the availability of other assets that could be used for product development. The totals must be tallied and used as a baseline for what is available for product roadmaps. This increases their efficiency in the roadmap selection process by reducing the number of roadmaps to only those that they can actually implement and decreases risk of schedule slippage caused by overutilization of resources.