Recognizing and Shaping Opportunities
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Entrepreneurship
+ I N TE R A C TI VE I L LU S TR AT I O N S
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Recognizing and Shaping
Opportunities
LYNDA M. APPLEGATE
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
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CAROLE CARLSON
8056 | Published: September 1, 2014
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Vikas Gupta, at Institute of Management Technology - Ghaziabad (IMT) until December 2014. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 3
2 Essential Reading …show more content…
Successful
entrepreneurs have the same kind of “prepared mind.” They are able to look at a familiar situation and see patterns and relationships that others have not seen. And they know how to take their ideas and shape them into opportunities to create value—for customers, investors, employees, advisers, and partners.
Coming up with an idea is just the first step in an entrepreneurial journey. Turning that idea into a compelling opportunity that inspires customers, partners, and investors to come along on the journey requires analytical capabilities, passion, and determination. (See the sidebar “How Is an Idea Different from an Opportunity?”)
How Is an Idea Different from an Opportunity?
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An entrepreneur might get an idea for a new venture by seeing patterns that suggest a solution to a compelling market need—one that customers may not even have identified.
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An entrepreneur turns an idea into an opportunity by crafting a business model that identifies a strategy for targeting a market segment with a solution that will attract customers, partners, investors, key employees, and other resources that will be needed to enter and gain traction in the market and create value for all stakeholders. This value proposition will also include cash flow forecasts that reflect the entrepreneur’s assumptions for how the business model will generate cash flow once it