Opportunity Identification Quotes

Our job is to find out what's the next thing that is going to be advantageous to us and contribute to winning.

Innovation requires us to systematically identify changes that have already occurred in a business - in demographics, in values, in technology or science - and then to look at them as opportunities. It also requires something that is most difficult for existing companies to do: to abandon rather than defend yesterday.

At least before my hip replacement, I had a quick first step. I could get by you off the dribble. My business game is the same way. I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you.

Most successful businesses in the country were started on a kitchen table. As long as people have needs unmet or problems unsolved, there are business opportunities.

The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.

Opportunities are problems in search of solutions.

Working with some outside consultants or people that really can bring you an external perspective or a benchmarking to identify opportunities is a really good way to work.

With a wonderful business, you can figure out what will happen; you can't figure out when it will happen. You don't want to focus on when, you want to focus on what. If you're right about what, you don't have to worry about when

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.

You're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That's value investing.

If you are not actively seeking and creating opportunities, which always contain an element of risk, you are actually exposing yourself to more serious risks in the long term.

Everyone wants to work with the big new producer or the hot new singer. The key is to find them before they're hot.

Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you're going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren't quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.

In a lot of ways, it's not the money that allows you to do new things. It's the growth and the ability to find things that people want and to use your creativity to target those.

What drives me is the prospect of turning an obstacle into a business opportunity, and then growing that into something lasting and rewarding.

We have done some of these in Bangladesh. Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company. That's what I did all my life.

Entrepreneurs are moving from a world of problem-solving to a world of problem-finding. The very best ones are able to uncover problems people didn't realize that they had.

Bringing together the right information with the right people will dramatically improve a company's ability to develop and act on strategic business opportunities.

How can I go out there and create value?

One way of building private foresight out of public data is looking where others aren't ... if you want to see the future, go to an industry confab and get the list of what was talked about. Then ask, "What did people never talk about?" That's where you're going to find opportunity.

You have a certain set of facts and you are looking for situations where you have an edge, whether the edge is psychological or statistical.

At many companies, business development is treated as a sales tool for incremental growth, but I believe that business development can bend our growth curve in a big way. It should accelerate our ability to grow, helping us quickly close gaps or leap ahead of competitors.

I will take the lead in turning risks into opportunities.

As an investor-entrepreneur, I’ve always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.

I tell people: walk around for one month and write down three problems in your life every day. At first it's easy - you got stuck in traffic, you missed your alarm - but by the end of the month you're looking really hard to get your 90 problems. The most common things on your list are now billion-dollar businesses.