Many businesses discover solutions to their own industry challenges, only to realise they’re sitting on an opportunity that could transform their business globally. The question is: could you be sitting on such a goldmine?
Identifying Opportunities in Your Industry
As a business owner, you’re intimately familiar with the challenges of your industry. If you’ve tried solving a problem within your business but found no suitable solutions, and you believe you have an innovative way to address it, you may have struck gold.
The key question: Is this a problem that others in your industry face too? If so, you may be onto something big.
What Are “Whitespace Opportunities”?
Today, mid-tier businesses have more potential than ever to transform into global providers. A whitespace opportunity refers to an untapped area in your industry where solutions are lacking. By developing a solution that addresses an industry-wide problem, you could become a pioneer in your field with the ability to supply your industry worldwide.
Examples of Innovation
At Advivo ICP, we’ve worked with numerous businesses that identified such whitespace opportunities. We refer to these companies as “Specific Market Industry Disruption Innovators” (SMIDIs). They innovate to solve industry-wide problems and often grow larger than their original business. Here are a few examples:
- Engineering Firm: Developed a design automation tool that reduced costs by 60% and now licenses it to competitors.
- Pipe Fabrication Company: Created software to automate procurement, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and generating new revenue streams.
- Construction Wholesaler: Invented a product now distributed across the industry through competitors.
- Town Planning Consultants: could not find a suitable management software solution so built it themselves. Now commercialised with many of their competitors jumping on board
In all cases above, these innovative ideas, once validated as real commercial opportunities, were spun out of the core business entity structure and now operate as stand-alone self-funded operations, while the core business continues on its merry way.
The common thread: they identified a problem, validated the market need, and created a new business operation that now supplies their competitors.
How to Validate Your Innovation
Before investing heavily, it’s important to validate that there’s a market for your idea. At Advivo ICP, we use exclusive AI tools to map market structures in real-time. Within just a few hours, we can help you identify niche sub-markets that align with your solution. From there, you can develop a minimum viable product (MVP), a low-cost prototype to test and validate the idea.
Change Management or Transformation?
Transforming your business doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning your core operations. Instead, by solving industry-wide problems, you could shift from competing locally to becoming a global supplier, usually under a new entity structure once your idea is validated. Whether through more efficient workflow processes, automated systems, or innovative products, the opportunities for industry-wide impact are vast.
Next Steps
If your business can benefit from solving a problem, chances are your competitors would too. The next step is to conceptualise your solution, identify potential buyers, and validate it in niche sub-markets.
If you think you’re sitting on an innovation goldmine, reach out to us at Advivo ICP. We’d be happy to help you explore your idea and guide you through the process of turning it into a global success.
Email: innovate@advivoicp.com
Phone: 07 3226 1800
