Classifying opportunity responses

 

Brook Bicycles have heard that one of their suppliers has developed a self repairing tyre for motor vehicles that automatically seals punctures. The supplier is considering whether to adapt the technology to fit bicycles.

This could have potential marketing benefits for Brooke’s new range of Mountain Bikes giving them an advantage over the competition.

Activity

There are a number of things that the company could do in response to this opportunity, four of which are listed below. There is one example of each type of response (Exploit, Share, Enhance and Accept).

Click here to download a interactive word file where you can note your thoughts. Don't dwell on these too long. It is possible to interpret an action in more than one way. Allocate the types of action to the examples that seem to be the best fit.

Then you can click here to get a model answer.

Action

Type

Form a partnership with the supplier to develop the technology

 

Buy a licence for the technology and adapt if for use on bicycles

 

Do nothing

 

Make a contractual commitment to buy 50,000 tyres over two years if a bicycle version is available

 

 

What next?

Threat responses

A similar exercise dealing with threats rather than opportunities..

 

Further reading

Identifying opportunities

There are at least four distinct ways of finding opportunities on a project.

Opportunity equals scope creep?

A common concern is that proactively seeking opportunities may result in scope creep, as a result of looking for extra unplanned benefits in addition to those already defined in the agreed scope.

 

 

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