idea to oppotunity

1. THE CORE OF QUALITY HEALTH CARE EDUCATION 1
Presented by: Mr. Z. Njoroge
THE CORE OF
HEALTHCARE
EDUCATION
From Idea to Opportunity

2. Idea Creation
• A business idea is the perception that a course of action is potentially profitable or
value adding. An idea is not synonymous with an opportunity.
• An idea is simply the conception of a possibility.
• “The idea serves as a seed from which a business may or may not develop. Without
proper selection, planting, cultivating and harvesting, the seed has very little value”
(Zimmerer and Scarborough cited in Venter, Urban and Rwigema 2008: 60).
• Ideas are an entrepreneur’s raw material.
• Entrepreneurs must focus on few promising ideas.
• Entrepreneurs seek promising ideas and forge them into profitable ventures.
• Opportunity is created when innovation is creatively applied to business ideas.

3. Sources of Business Ideas
• The entrepreneur’s skills, expertise and aptitudes
• From formal written/or documentary sources
• Trade shows
• From common needs -very day one encounters unsolved problems
• Being aware
• Observation what goes on around
• Hobbies and interests
• Invent a new product or service
• Add value to an existing product

4. Opportunity
An opportunity is a favorable set of circumstances that creates a need for a new
product, service, or business
A business opportunity represents a possibility for the entrepreneur to successfully fill
a large enough unsatisfied need that enough sales and profits result.
a) Internally stimulated. An entrepreneur decides to start a firm, searches for
and recognizes an opportunity, then starts a business.
b) Externally stimulated. An entrepreneur recognizes a problem or an
opportunity gap and creates a business to fill it.
Ways of starting Entrepreneurial Business:

5. What is an Opportunity?
Four Essential Qualities of an Opportunity
Opportunity
(Rather than just an idea)
Attractive
Anchored in a
product, service
or business that
cerates or adds
value for the
buyer or end user
Durable
Timely
An opportunity needs to be
attractive, timely, durable,
and anchored in a product or
service that creates or adds
value to a customer.

6. Window of Opportunity?
• Window of Opportunity – The term “window of
opportunity” is a metaphor describing the time
period in which a firm can realistically enter a new
market.
• It can also be defines as a short, often fleeting time
period during which a rare and desired action can
be taken.
• Once the market for a new product is established,
its window of opportunity opens, and new entrants
flow in.
• At some point, the market matures, and the window
of opportunity (for new entrants) closes.
Window of opportunity -
Not to early not too late

7. Three Ways to Identify an Opportunity
• Economic Trends
• Social Trends
• Technological Trends
• Political & Regulatory
Trends
Observing Trends Solving a Problem
Finding Gaps in the
Marketplace

8. First Approach: Observing Trends
• Observing Trends
• Trends create opportunities for entrepreneurs to pursue.
• The most important trends are:
• Economic forces
• Social forces
• Technological advances
• Political and regulatory change
• It’s important to be aware of changes in these areas.

9. From Trends to Opportunity
• An opportunity takes advantage of the pressures
exerted by economic forces, social forces, technology,
and political forces
Economic Forces
economy
income
spending
Social Forces
social-cultural
demographic
trendiness
Technology
new
emerging
new use for old
Political Forces
political arena
regulatory
Gap
Business, Product,
Service
available vs possible
New
Business, Product,
Service

10. PEST Forces
Economic trends help determine areas
that are ripe for new start-ups and
areas that start-ups should avoid.
Advances in technology frequently
create business opportunities.
Once a technology is created,
products often emerge to advance it.
Political action and regulatory
changes also provide the basis
for opportunities.
Social trends alter how people and
businesses behave and set their
priorities. These trends provide
opportunities for new businesses to
accommodate the changes.

11. Second Approach: Solving a Problem
• Solving a Problem
• Sometimes identifying opportunities simply involves
noticing a problem and finding a way to solve it.
• These problems can be pinpointed through observing
trends and through more simple means, such as intuition,
serendipity, or change.
• Many companies have been started by people who have
experienced a problem in their own lives, and then
realized that the solution to the problem represented a
business opportunity.

12. Third Approach: Finding Gaps in the Marketplace
• Gaps in the Marketplace
• A third approach to identifying opportunities is to find a gap in the marketplace.
• A gap in the marketplace is often created when a product or service is needed by a
specific group of people but doesn’t represent a large enough market to be of
interest to mainstream retailers or manufacturers.
Product gaps in the
marketplace represent
potentially viable
business opportunities.
Specific Example
1.Native Foods realized there was no locally
brewed ice tea. To fill this gap, the company
started brewing Mosukujane ice tea
2.Dr. Rampana found a gap that in Botswana
there was no Private Health Education
provided === He founded Boitekanelo
College

13. Personal Characteristics of the Entrepreneur
Characteristics that tend to make some people better at recognizing
opportunities than others
Prior Experience Cognitive Factors
Social Networks Creativity
2-13

14. 1. Prior Experience
• Prior experience in an industry helps an entrepreneur recognize business
opportunities.
• By working in an industry, an individual may spot a market niche that is underserved.
• It is also possible that by working in an industry, an individual builds a network of
social contacts who provide insights that lead to recognizing new opportunities.
2-14
2. Cognitive Factors
• Studies have shown that opportunity recognition may be an innate skill or cognitive
process.
• Some people believe that entrepreneurs have a “sixth sense” that allows them to see
opportunities that others miss.
• This “sixth sense” is called entrepreneurial alertness, which is formally defined as the
ability to notice things without engaging in deliberate search.

15. Social Networks
• Social Networks
• The extent and depth of an individual’s social network affects opportunity recognition.
• People who build a substantial network of social and professional contacts will be
exposed to more opportunities and ideas than people with sparse networks.
• Research results suggest that between 40% and 50% of people who start a business got
their idea via a social contact.
• Strong Tie Vs. Weak Tie Relationships
• All of us have relationships with other people that are called “ties.”

16. 3. Social Networks
• Nature of Strong-Tie Vs. Weak-Tie Relationships
• Strong-tie relationships are characterized by frequent interaction and form between
coworkers, friends, and spouses.
• Weak-tie relationships are characterized by infrequent interaction and form between
casual acquaintances.
• Result
• It is more likely that an entrepreneur will get new business ideas through weak-tie rather
than strong-tie relationships.
Why weak-tie relationships lead to more new business ideas than strong-tie relationships?
Strong-Tie Relationships Weak-Tie Relationships
These relationships, which typically form between
like-minded individuals, tend to reinforce insights
and ideas that people already have.
These relationships, which form between casual
acquaintances, are not as apt to be between like-minded
individuals, so one person may say something to another that
sparks a completely new idea.

17. Creativity
• Creativity
• Creativity is the process of generating a novel or useful idea.
• Opportunity recognition may be, at least in part, a creative process.
• For an individual, the creative process can be broken down into five stages
Five Steps to Generating Creative Ideas

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1. Preparation
– most business ideas stem from previous experience –often at work.
– Malcolm Gladwell contends that those who work on any activity for 10,000 hours are
far more likely to be successful than those with less exposure.
2. Incubation
– Pondering or ruminating an idea just below the surface.
3. Insight –”Eureka” -”Aha!”
– Sometimes an idea just hits us out of the blue.
4. Evaluation
– Viability –find the weak spots. Don’t be blinded by a dream
5. Elaboration
– Working out all the details –doing the business plan
Components of the Process of Creativity
Note that creativity goes beyond the “Aha” moment and requires evaluation and elaboration.

19. Techniques for Generating Ideas
According to the excellent text, “Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New
Ventures,” by Bruce Barringer and R. Duane Ireland these are some key ways to
generate ideas.
a) Brainstorming
b) Focus groups
c) Library and internet research
d) Other: customer advisory boards, day-in-the-life research
e) Create an idea bank on your intranet.
Other Techniques
All of these can be useful but are generally more successful in generating
incremental innovations rather than radical innovations or truly new ideas.

20. Brainstorming
• Is a technique used to generate a large number of ideas and solutions to problems quickly.
• A brainstorming “session” typically involves a group of people, and should be targeted to a
specific topic.
• Rules for a brainstorming session:.
• No criticism.
• Freewheeling is encouraged.
• The session should move quickly.
• Leap-frogging is encouraged
• A focus group is a gathering of five to ten people, who have been selected based on their
common characteristics relative to the issues being discussed.
• These groups are led by a trained moderator, who uses the internal dynamics of the group
environment to gain insight into why people feel the way they do about a particular issue.
• Although focus groups are used for a variety of purposes, they can be used to help generate
new business ideas.
Focus Group

21. Library and Internet Research
• Libraries are an often underutilized source of information for generating new business
ideas.
• The best approach is to talk to a reference librarian, who can point out useful resources,
such as industry-specific magazines, trade journals, and industry reports.
• Simply browsing through several issues of a trade journal or an industry report on a topic
can spark new ideas.
Internet Research
• If you are starting from scratch, simply typing “new business ideas” into a search
engine will produce links to newspapers and magazine articles about the “hottest”
new business ideas.
• If you have a specific topic in mind, setting up Google mail alerts will provide you
with links to a constant stream of newspaper articles, blog posts, and news releases
about the topic.
• Targeted searches are also useful.

22. Other Techniques
• Customer Advisory Boards
• Some companies set up customer advisory boards that meet regularly to
discuss needs, wants, and problems that may lead to new ideas.
• Day-In-The-Life Research
• A type of anthropological research, where the employees of a company
spend a day with a customer.

23. Encouraging New Ideas
• Establishing a Focal Point for Ideas
• Some firms meet the challenge of encouraging, collecting, and evaluating
ideas by designating a specific person to screen and track them—for if it’s
everybody’s job, it may be no one’s responsibility.
• Another approach is to establish an idea bank (or vault), which is a physical
or digital repository for storing ideas.
• Encouraging Creativity at the Firm Level
• Creativity is the raw material that goes into innovation and should be
encouraged at the organizational and individual supervisory level.

24. Entrepreneurial Self Assessment

25. Evaluating Business Idea: Feasibility and Viability
• The use of creativity methods results in the generation of business ideas.
• In reality most of these ideas will not work. In other words, they are not
opportunities
• To Test if an idea is workable – test its feasibility and viability
• Feasibility answers the question “Can the idea work?” while viability answers
the question “Will the idea and the business make money?

26. Difference Between Feasibility and Viability
Feasibility
• A study that results in one or more feasible ideas
• Is a general examination of the potential of a business idea to be converted into a
business enterprise
Viability
• A study that results in the most viable idea that may turn out to be the winning
concept on which to base the final profitable business.
• A viability study is an in-depth investigation of the profitability of the idea to be
converted into a small business enterprise.

27. Evaluating Business Idea: Feasibility
• To determine the feasibility of our business ideas we will ask ourselves the
following key questions:
• Do you want to do what the idea suggests?
• Is there a market for the idea?
• Can you meet the needs of the consumers?
• Can you communicate the idea to the consumers?
If we can answer yes, to these questions then we are ready to do a viability
test.
Testing the viability of a business idea has a lot to do with assessing the
potential market for a particular product or service

28. Feasibility – SWOT Analysis
• The SWOT analysis was invented by Albert S. Humphrey in the 1960s.
• SWOT analysis aims to identify the key internal and external factor
a) Internal factors – the strengths and weaknesses internal to the organization
b) External factors – the opportunities and threats presented by the
environment external to the organization

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30. Evaluating Business Idea: Viability
• Viability study whether the idea can be marketed and the business can be managed at a
sustainable profit level.
• If you cannot manage a business over time at a sustainable profit, the idea is non-viable. It
is advisable to drop the idea at this stage
If we can answer yes, to these questions then we are ready to do a viability
test.
Testing the viability of a business idea has a lot to do with assessing the
potential market for a particular product or service

31. Entrepreneurial Potential Self
• https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/entrepreneur-toolkit/business-
assessments

33. • Creativity is thinking new things, and innovation is doing new things
 Creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and to discover new ways of looking at
problems and opportunities.
 Innovation is the ability to apply creative solutions to those problems and
opportunities in order to enhance people’s lives or to enrich society
Entrepreneurship = creativity + innovation
INNOVATION
What is the relationship between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurs?

34. THE CORE OF QUALITY HEALTH CARE EDUCATION 34
FROM CREATIVITY TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP

35. From Creativity to Entrepreneurship
 Creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and to
discover new ways of looking at problems and
opportunities.
 Innovation is the ability to apply creative solutions to
those problems and opportunities in order to enhance
people’s lives or to enrich society
Researchers believe that entrepreneurs succeed by
thinking and doing new things or old things in new ways .
 Entrepreneurship is the result of a disciplined,
systematic process of applying creativity and innovation
to needs and opportunities in the marketplace.

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37. Schumpeter (1934) was first to point out the importance of new value created by entrepreneurs.
More recently, Carland, Hoy, Boulton and Carland (1984) extended and specified Schumpeter’s idea,
saying that entrepreneurs:
 introduce new goods
 introduce new services
 introduce new methods of production
 open new markets
 open new sources of supply
 re-organise industry.
Innovation

38. There are four distinct types of innovation, these are as follows:
Invention - described as the creation of a new product, service or process
Extension - the expansion of a product, service or process
Duplication - defined as replication of an already existing product, service or process
Synthesis - the combination of existing concepts and factors into a new formulation
Innovation

39. THE CORE OF QUALITY HEALTH CARE EDUCATION 39

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1. Incremental Innovation
Existing Technology, Existing Market
One of the most common forms of innovation that we can observe.
It uses existing technologies within an existing market. The goal is
to improve an existing offering by adding new features, changes in
the design, etc.
Example
The best Example for incremental innovation can be seen in the
Smartphone market where the most innovation is only updating
the hardware, improving the design, or adding some additional
features/cameras/sensors, etc.

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Disruptive Innovation
New Technology, Existing Market
Disruptive innovation is mostly associated with applying new
technologies, processes, or disruptive business models to
existing industries. Sometimes new technologies and
business models seem, especially in the beginning, inferior to
the existing solutions but after some iterations, they surpass
the existing models and take over the market due to
efficiency and/or efficacy advantages.

42. There are several myths associated with innovation. They come about as a
result of misconception of innovation.
Innovation Myths
a) Innovation is planned and predictable
b) Technical specifications should be thoroughly prepared in advance
c) Innovation relies on dreams and blue-sky ideas
d) Big projects will develop better innovations than smaller ones
e) Technology is the driving force of innovation success.

43. Innovation Myths - Cont
a) Innovation is planned and predictable
b) Technical specifications should be thoroughly prepared in advance
• Based on the old concept that innovation should be left to the research and
development (R&D) department under a planned format.
• In truth, innovation is unpredictable and may be introduced by anyone.
• Originate from the engineering arena, which drafts complete plans before
moving on.
• Thorough preparation is good, but it sometimes takes too long.

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Innovation Myths - Cont
c) Innovation relies on dreams and blue-sky ideas
d) Big projects will develop better innovations than smaller ones
e) Technology is the driving force of innovation success.
• This statement has been proven false time and again.
• Larger companies are now encouraging their people to work in smaller
groups where it often is easier to generate creative ideas.
• Technology is certainly one source for innovation, but it is not the only one.
• Accomplished innovators are very practical people and create from
opportunities grounded in reality not daydreams

45. Five Myths...cont
Whilst Innovation encompasses a large area, it is pertinent to
point out that there are a number of principles of
innovation. An important message here is that
entrepreneurs must realise that these principles exist and
that they can be learned.
 One of the principles is to be action-oriented. The
entrepreneur must always be looking for new ideas.
 Making the product, process or service simple and
understandable is another example of a principle of
innovation.
Innovation

46. • Financial pressures to reduce costs, increase efficiency, do more with less, etc
• Increased competition
• Shorter product life cycles
• Value migration
• Stricter regulation
• Industry and community needs for sustainable development
• Increased demend for accountability
• Demographic, social and maket changes
• Rising customer expectations regarding service and quality
• Changing economy
• Greater availability of potentially useful technologies coupled with a need to
exceed the competition in these technologies
Drivers of Innovation