What is an opportunity register?

The opportunity register is like an inventory of potential opportunities and insights. It's a list of your ideas for improving, or even completely reinventing, your current business model, or for going into entirely new opportunity spaces. It is meant to be a work in progress, one that you constantly add to and renew. The concept was borrowed from a successful entrepreneur, whose philosophy is that anyone who can access a full inventory of possible opportunities is unlikely to run out of good ideas.

Here's an example: vending machine opportunity register.

Instructions

These instructions address (1) the outline and criteria for your opportunity register(s) and (2) how to submit your opportunity register for credit.

An entrepreneurial opportunity must be attractive, durable, timely, and grounded in a product or service that delivers value to a group of customers. You create value for the customer and capture some of that value by selling that product or service at a price that is greater than your costs. This opportunity can be an adaptation of an business that is already currently being provided to a customer group or it can be completely new (you will find that adapting existing offerings of experiences is probably much easier). IDEALLY your opportunity register is a first step in thinking about how to solve a problem you are aware that people have. In writing up your opportunity registers, please keep these criteria in mind. Be sure to use the three major headings of opportunity type, description, and assessment. Finally, please be sure that your idea for an opportunity is legal.

1/ Outline and criteria for opportunity register

1. Opportunity Type: Product or service

2. Opportunity description: What is the product or service you are offering; what need does the product or service satisfy; who is the primary group of constituents who will want this product or service; how does the primary group of constituents currently try to fulfill their need (however imperfectly); and when, where, and how often would your constituent group use this product or service? Note: If possible, you are strongly encouraged to incorporate photos and videos in your opportunity description; this is particularly appropriate when you are proposing a modification to an existing product or service.

3. Opportunity assessment: Drawing from your description of the opportunity, estimate potential revenues, variable costs, and necessary fixed costs that you would have to incur to pursue this opportunity. Do the numbers make it worthwhile? If not, can you revisit some assumptions to make it a profitable opportunity? Can you replicate this product or service in different geographic areas or with a second, different group of constituents? Use these three words to guide your approach to the opportunity assessment: numbers, numbers, numbers. [Hint: Use the break-even analysis equation)

Why focus on break-even analysis? You need to understand what is happening at the unit level of the transaction if you are going to succeed financially. How much revenue do I get from a primary offering of my value proposition, how much does that unit cost to me, and how much money do I need to spend to maintain the asset base needed to produce and deliver the value proposition.

So, first of all, doing so, even if your investor audience doesn't ask about it, you will know up front what your main fixed costs will be in order to produce and deliver your value proposition. You will also know what your principal source of revenue will cost you (variable cost for inventory as you turn it into cost of goods sold) and how much revenue you can earn from that principal source (variable revenue).

Second, break-even analysis tends to be the first type of mathematical analysis a potential investor will perform before digging into other financial assumptions and forecasts you've made. And if you haven't done this first level of numeric analysis then your investor audience will not want to be bothered to look at the rest of your assumptions. You can graduate up to more complex types of break-even analysis after you've focused on your primary unit level transactions.

2/ How to submit your opportunity registers

1. Follow the outline and criteria I’ve just described. Use the vending machine example I’ve provided to get an idea for the level of detail, flow, and content. Your opportunity register will be just over a page in length (single-space paragraphs, 12-point font).

2. To turn in each of your opportunity registers write the three major sections and your contributions in a Word or google doc and attach it to an email you send to MGT386@gmail.com (for MGT 386) or NVDBAMA@gmail.com (for New Venture Development) or 387opportunities@gmail.com (for MGT 387).

3. In the SUBJECT LINE of the email please write Opportunity Register.