Unlocking Opportunities for Growth

There is a fundamental flaw in the way most companies invest in innovation. They are using investment analysis tools that bias them against the uncertainty that is inherent in real innovation, and lead managers to limit risk by avoiding their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough alternative: Opportunity Engineering. Drawing upon recent advances in financial analysis, the authors show how to engineer the risk out of uncertain opportunities, so you can pursue more high-payoff innovations. You'll learn how to escape from the "go/no-go vise," and implement more flexible decision-making that considers all the business alternatives, models, and opportunities associated with each project. These include: opportunities to redirect projects "on the fly," to sell the venture or its intellectual property; to scale up, slow down, or postpone projects; and to spawn joint ventures or mergers. Using Discovery Driven Planning (DDP), you'll learn how to define the scope of investment opportunities, identify key drivers of potential profits, document your assumptions, and tease out key project challenges and vulnerabilities. Then, for projects that offer potential, you'll move on to CheckPointing: systematically structuring ways to limit downside exposure and boost potential upside. Master these techniques, and you can escape the mindset that limits you to low-impact innovations. You can finally start making business uncertainty work for you, not against you.