If you’re:
* Entering a new market with an existing service
* Launching a new offering
* Capturing market share during times of disruption
…here are the 3 lenses I review with clients in order to make strategic decisions on where to invest time, energy, personnel and money to grow their company
Lens 1: Historical Context & Qualification
Here’s what to look for:
1. What measurable, fact only (no opinion) data points can validate this opportunity’s viability?
2. Does the new market fit your criteria (and align with your capabilities)?
3. What’s the risk vs. upside and how do we quantify both?
This can help you easily eliminate bad ideas you thought were opportunities.
Lens 2: The Future
Since no one can predict the future, you have to go further than just reviewing market trends and forecast reports (which are valuable in themselves)
Here you must identify first, second and third order consequences of what might potentially happen.
As you review each potential consequence, you have to process how that may affect you.
A simple way to do this is by asking
“if this were true, how would this affect X”
Since we’re dealing with hypotheticals, we’ll tie this thinking to Lens 3 to keep it grounded.
Lens 3: Unchanging Principles
Principles are laws or foundational blocks that never change regardless of the situation. For example, the law of gravity does not change over time or space (or even if you believe it may not exist, it will still work!)
Your job here is to identify what principles are at play with
* your market
* your offering
* the opportunity you’re looking to enter into
* the external forces at play (macro economic, social, consumer behavior)
Once you’ve identified the principles at play, you use them to anchor your thinking from lens 1 & 2 back to reality and create working hypothesis.
Then all that’s left is to make your move, measure, optimize etc.