http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/white_spaces_blog.html hourly 1 1970-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4385754 <p class="plain">One of the key dimensions of White Space Strategies is the business model dimension. Changing business models can open up entirely new vistas of opportunity by simply redefining how a business gets done. <br><br>In a paper from MIT's Sloane School focused on determining the relative advantage of specific business models, the authors propose a typology of business models that can be very useful in white space analysis. They propose that all business models can be categorized on two principal dimensions - The types of rights being sold and the assets involved. Based on this classification they arrive at 16 basic business models that describe the spectrum of potential business models as combinations of:<br></p><ul><li class="plain">Creators</li><li class="plain">Distributors</li><li class="plain">Landlords</li><li class="plain">Brokers </li></ul>of assets that are:<br><ul><li class="plain">Physical</li><li class="plain">Financial</li><li class="plain">Intangible</li><li class="plain">Human</li></ul>This typology can serve very well to establish the types of business models that lend themselves to white space thinking and new models based on changing the current ones to increase customer value. <br><p class="plain"></p> White Space Strategy 2008-07-18T09:03:30-07:00 Business Models and White Spaces http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4147932 <p class="plain">My good friend and colleague Art Petty just posted an excellent blog entry on the leadership challenges in new market creation. In <a link="" target="_blank" href="http://artpettyonmanagement.typepad.com/bestpractices/2008/05/seven-suggestions-to-consider-when-creating-a-new-market.html" class="plain">Seven Suggestions to Consider When Creating A New Market</a> Art does a wonderful job of describing the management challenges of new market creation and providing some very real insight into the differences between steady-state marketing and evangelizing a new market. At the same time, Art provides a wonderful leadership perspective that we all need to heed in his discussion of remembering not to breathe your own exhaust fumes as you create new market opportunity. Have a read, it's well worth the time.<br></p><b><br></b><p class="plain"></p> White Space Strategy 2008-05-29T16:13:06-07:00 Leadership and Market Creation http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4094355 <span class="plain">In my last article, I described the “White Space Strategy” approach to competition – Namely, finding new, unserved, markets, or white spaces, and filling them in with new value. Often, capitalizing on white space opportunities also involves creating new value networks to serve the previously unserved markets, or even enabling these new markets exclusively by creating new value networks that previously didn’t exist.</span> <p class="plain">Amazon, for example, not only revolutionized the business model for selling books, but also formed an entire new value network of suppliers and buyers that redefined the value chain for acquiring books and music. Replacing the retail bookstore with a web site and  the “over the counter” delivery process with USPS, Fedex, and UPS delivery created a new value network that delivered customer convenience and an entirely different and lower cost business model. Applying that success to other retail items – from clothing to electronics and kitchenware – has resulted in the formation of a new super-retailer that we all have come to take for granted.</p> <p class="plain">Perhaps even more importantly, Amazon’s new “networked” business model has allowed much more extensive inventories and offerings and the inclusion of other retailers in Amazon’s value network to serve increasingly more specialized customer desires. The resulting network of product providers has allowed Amazon to serve more and more of the “Long Tail” to the point that today Amazon’s daily sales of specialized Long Tail items exceed its sales of best sellers.</p> <p class="plain">By looking at your own company’s value network and exploring the possibilities presented by alternative value networks of suppliers, intermediaries and “retailers” it’s often possible to identify new market spaces that are available to be addressed with a new value chain. For example:<br></p><ul><li class="plain"> Could your software be delivered as a hosted solution by a third party hoster, opening up new, previously unaddressed segments with minimal additional costs?</li></ul><ul><li class="plain">Could your consulting and/or training services be delivered as an interactive on-line or CD-ROM based product?</li><li class="plain">Might a new group of customers prefer a service solution delivered by a third party versus your current product purchase solution?</li></ul> Perhaps even more importantly:<br><ul><li class="plain">Can your product address previously unserved markets with a different whole product than that you currently provide? </li><li class="plain">Can the addition of unique partner and alliance value that you haven’t previously provided create whole new market opportunities? </li></ul>The addition of select alliances and partners can often open up whole new market opportunities by either capitalizing on their domain expertise, or specialized channels and delivery networks. Platform vendors in particular can often find white spaces for their platform offerings by conducting rigorous whole product brainstorming sessions based on identifying potential new value networks. <p class="plain">The search for white space opportunities should be a regular part of the business development review process, particularly where growth has slowed and the growth potential in current market spaces has proven inadequate. Reviewing current value chains and exploring new value network opportunities can be a valuable tool for re-igniting growth.</p> White Space Strategy 2008-05-17T11:48:33-07:00 White Space and Value Chain Strategy: Creating Value Networks http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4094115 t a recent panel discussion on growth, I heard an attendee recite the “Four Fundamentals Formula” for growth that we’ve all learned as the accepted methodology for growing a company: <ul><li class="plain">Penetration – Saturate the current segment</li><li class="plain">Market Expansion - Expand your potential market into adjacent segments</li><li class="plain">Product Expansion -  Sell current customers new products</li><li class="plain">Geographical Expansion - Go International</li></ul> <p class="plain">It’s a great list, and the concepts are so fundamental that we’ve come to accept them as the “right” answer for start-up business plans and public company strategies alike.</p> <p class="plain">But the world has changed, and the competition for growth has become more intense than ever. The accepted formulas for growth have become a necessary, but not sufficient recipe for the kind of stellar growth that sets a Salesforce.com or Google apart from the crowd. This is where “White Space Strategy” becomes critical.</p> <p class="plain">Companies that become skilled at asking “Where’s the white space?” of non-consumers and unserved or non-enabled market needs will be the companies that exhibit sustainable hyper-growth in the future. Business plans that follow the PMPG (Penetrate – new Market – new Product – new Geography) model well will achieve adequate growth to satisfy investors and financial markets, but the superstars will focus on executing sustained White Space Strategies. Only White Space market opportunities will provide the  potential for sustainable double- and triple-digit growth.</p> <p class="plain">White Space focused companies will become adept at asking and answering key enabling questions such as:</p> <ul><li class="plain">Where in our “resource addressable” business space are there significant non-consumer, underserved, or overshot consumer opportunities?</li><li class="plain">What technology-based and/or technology driven opportunities exist today that did not exist in the past?</li><li class="plain">New technologies</li><li class="plain">Newly technology-enabled business models</li><li class="plain">What new value-chains and value networks are now enabled, existent or potentially existent?</li><li class="plain">What elements of current competition have become irrelevant and what new elements have become important and underserved?</li><li class="plain">How are the industry business models outdated, inefficient or insufficient?</li></ul> <p class="plain">What is the result of this questioning process? Apple is an excellent example. Steve Jobs and company have once again exhibited their skill at identifying and serving White Spaces with the iPod. The greatest proportion of people wearing the near-ubiquitous white earphones today, weren’t wearing any earphones yesterday. Why? - Because the portable CD player, tape player or radio didn’t compellingly serve their needs, or for that matter, capitalize on current technology and changing distribution and consumption patterns. The iPod has successfully captured non-consumers and underserved or overshot consumers with a single product concept that has redefined the market. Users and non-users have flocked to the simplicity and ease of use and distribution of the iPod and iTunes, enabling a much larger market than the previous market for personal music players.</p> White Space Strategy 2008-05-17T10:42:36-07:00 White Space Strategy for Growth http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4093978 <div class="plain"> <p class="plain">White Spaces have been a key part of my consulting practice from the very outset of my consulting career. In working at Booz Allen, then Regis McKenna, and finally in association with Geoffrey Moore as an affiliate of The Chasm Group, the challenge was always to find the answers that created new opportunities for my clients.</p> <p class="plain">Although the names used to describe the fundamental idea were different in each case, the goal was always the same - stake out new territory and/or create new opportunity. Most recently, I described the foundation of my practice as “changing the rules” to create competitive advantage for my clients.</p> <p class="plain">The concept of “White Space” came from the realization that the “rule changing strategies” I was developing always included changing the rules to create new opportunity in ways that hadn’t been used before - changing the rules to create and then capture “white spaces”. In today’s hypercompetitive and fast moving markets, almost every “home run” we’ve seen is the result of capturing new white spaces in new ways.</p> <p class="plain">The iPod and iTunes, Google, SaaS, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook have all succeeded by creating and filling new spaces that superceded the old spaces they replaced and expanded the prior markets significantly. This is the core of white space strategy - change the rules and color outside the lines. What do you think?</p> </div> White Space Strategy 2008-05-17T10:06:44-07:00 Introduction to White Space http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4093930 <p class="plain">There is no shortage of advice on how to compete. From Trout and Ries to Michael Porter to Clayton Christensen, the frameworks and strategies abound. You can compete for the future, innovate to compete, compete like a gorilla, or as a guerilla, enter co-opetition with partners or apply Judo strategy. It’s common knowledge that you have to have a competitor to validate your category – but perhaps a little more thought is deserved here. It’s possible to create and validate a whole new category - not by being a direct competitor, but by being a powerful substitute to existing categories. <br><br>In “Blue Ocean Strategy” W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne point out numerous examples of just this “game changing” strategy by companies like Cirque du Soleil, Curves and Yellow Tail wines. They call this process of mapping out new territory “Blue Ocean Strategy” and present a well thought out framework for pursuing it that is much like the game changing “White Space Strategy” that we have pioneered with clients. Although this concept has been variously called category creation, market creation, market innovation, and now, finding blue oceans, it has yet to be integrated into the mainstream business processes of most companies. Rather, most continue to doggedly pursue new sources of competitive advantage in head-on-head competition.<br><br>White Space Strategy is advantaged in a number of ways, not the least of which is that it finds its genesis in the inexorable change that reshapes markets and competition.  By identifying change, and the opportunities to satisfy the new demands of changing markets, intrepid strategists can create new white space businesses almost continuously.<br><br>The key to finding the white space that can generate new markets and expand existing ones lies in:</p> <ul><li class="plain">Comprehensively mapping the existing markets and identifying the most relevant elements of competition</li><ul><li class="plain">Evaluating the relevance of current competitive elements and the current mix(es) employed by competitors</li></ul><ul><li class="plain">Identifying new competitive priorities as well as those that may have become less relevant</li></ul><li class="plain">Understanding the underlying business models and their strengths and weaknesses</li><ul><li class="plain">Are current cost and revenue elements still relevant?</li></ul><ul><li class="plain">How can the models be changed to create advantage in light of new services, technologies and other enablers?</li></ul><li class="plain">Identifying shifts in unmet customer needs that create opportunities for new product service paradigms</li><ul><li class="plain">What has changed that might motivate a customer to migrate to a new paradigm?</li></ul><ul><li class="plain">How have technology or economics changed the landscape to enable a new, even more compelling offering?</li></ul><li class="plain">Boldly “imagineering” new models and offers that can fill in the white space around current offerings with new, compelling offers and business models.</li></ul> White Space Strategy 2008-05-17T10:02:28-07:00 White Space – Why Compete Head-On When You Can Re-write the Rules? http://www.whitespacestrategy.com/pc_url_4074076 <p class="plain"><font class="heading1"><font class="plain">This blog is all about White Space Strategy, white spaces we observe in markets and business and how you can apply White Space Strategy in your business. The blog topics will vary from day to day as we find interesting, topical white spaces to write about. We hope you enjoy.</font><br></font></p> White Space Strategy 2008-05-14T07:07:04-07:00 Welcome to the White Spaces Blog