The Opportunity Discovery Process (ODP) finds specific opportunities in domains where value can be created. This process typically is undertaken after an organization has a clear idea of the strategy or strategic options it wants to investigate but before they have any specific business or technology in mind. The ODP is a learning process. It develops knowledge about new opportunities by starting with what may be ill-defined and incomplete notions and selecting, developing, growing them to the point that the select few are ready for a full-blown opportunity assessment.

The ODP starts with a defined Opportunity Domain or White Space. The white space is selected for it's importance either within an existing strategic framework (e.g. for an operating division) or for its importance in creating strategy options outside of existing business domains. In either case, the white space is selected as a potentially 'target rich' domain that needs to be explored using the ODP.

Given a domain, and optional selected starting points, an organized, fast and effective process identifies high-value opportunities. The process is designed to create an on-going engine for producing high-value opportunities ready for business validation.

The objective and results of this approach are to be able to explore broad regions of the target white space very quickly identifying potential opportunities and, where indicated, drilling down on specific opportunities to a level at which they can either be put aside or moved on to the next investigative iteration. By iterating on each opportunity at different levels of investigation, the process can simultaneously look at large numbers of possibilities and ‘pay appropriate attention’ to those that look the most promising.

The exploration process itself is evidence-based and biased towards engagements with an external community from which unmet needs and desires can be discovered.

The process is based on an Iterative Deepening methodology that continually generates numerous candidates and progressively investigates select candidates at increasing levels of depth and detail.
This process is illustrated in the following diagram:


There are three cycles in the process. These are:

1. Opportunity Hypothesis Cycle – occurs on a weekly basis: An opportunity hypothesis is a one or two sentence description of a potential opportunity. From 10 to 20 of these are created each week.
2. Opportunity Statement Cycle – occurs on a monthly basis: An opportunity statement is a one page description of an opportunity. Approximately 3-4 of these are generated each week (10 to 15 a month)
3. Opportunity Profile Cycle – occurs on a quarterly (or as needed) basis: An opportunity profile is a 3-5 page preliminary assessment of the opportunity. One to two of these are generated every month. Any one of these can be selected to launch a full opportunity assessment upon evaluation using the identified criteria and with the consensus of the team.

Selected opportunity profiles go on to full blown assessments (which can take from 1 to 4 months) to prepare them for the opportunity portfolio from which business case validations will be selected. It is possible to ‘short-circuit’ step 3 and go from opportunity statement to full blown assessment in the case of what the group sees as a compelling opportunity.