Appraising Business Opportunities

The process of working out how to exploit a perceived business opportunity is a journey of discovery made in the face of a lack of knowledge about the future outcome. A scoping business plan provides a way to prepare for uncertainty while keeping a direct line of sight on the prize.

Appraising Business Opportunities: The Stratisquare Framework describes an approach to appraise business opportunities by taking multiple considerations into account.

The foundations of the business opportunity appraisal framework are:

- The design of a business angle provides a way to match the characteristics of the perceived business opportunity, with the: aims, expectations and constraints on promoters of the venture; market context; and the nature of an appropriate production process.

- A business operates in several element markets concurrently.

- How core competencies are to be created.

The high-level analysis in the scoping business plan is usually enough for start-ups to seek funding from early-stage investors and for corporate programmes to gain stakeholder support.