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:: toolkit ::

Part 3 - The Enterprising Toolkit. What we're going to have a look at are a series of tools - I call them innovation - that we can we can use at any time, at any part of a development of an idea into an opportunity, to adjust that opportunity into a real business identity.

Some of the tools that we look at include one of my favourites - it's called Zooming. What we have to do is zoom out from our ideas, zoom out from our industry, right out into the environment. What are those political forces that act upon us? The environment, economics, society and technology.

We look at other tools and other popular models. Value chains, positioning maps, and other activities and techniques that will help us position our idea, to give it the best chance of survival in the market place.

If you can imagine, and you have now explored the enterprising mindset through the Mindshare model. We've now screened some ideas. Now we go into this imaginary toolkit, pick out the tool and build and strengthen our idea on its journey through the planning stage to making something happen.

Industry and Competitive Analysis

The Big Picture

When looking at your industry and competition, the model below is very relevant. You need to consider:

• Is your mindset in the central position on the diagram below, where it says 'Firm'?
• Are you zooming out past the Industry, past the industry critical success factors, past the environment?

If you zoom out and look at the big picture you can see the whole game. And with any game, if you can see the whole game the likelihood of winning increases. Entrepreneurs do one more thing - they zoom in, back to those details, getting the details right.

Critical Success Factors

Critical Success Factors - CSFs - are critical to the success of the organisation. CSFs often change due to driving forces, such as the political climate or the introduction of new technology. An organisation must match or exceed industry critical success factors to be successful in the market place.

CSFs are also related to the SWOT analysis and are therefore the beginnings of your sustainable competitive advantage. The diagram below shows that it is possible to use your strengths to minimise your weaknesses and that opportunities in the market place can be used to overcome or minimise threats. Competitive advantage is gained by considering the organisation's critical success factors and strengths, and using innovation to improve overall performance.

What is competition like?

How Strong Are the Competitive Forces?

Within your organisation, you need to assess the power of each of the five competitive forces. Is the power of your competitors high or low within each force?

From the competitive forces analysis you can decide whether:

• The market place is attractive or unattractive
• To stay or leave if you are already in the market
• To enter the market and when

The Five Competitive Forces that Determine Industry Competition

What makes a market attractive?

The five forces enables us to analyse the market and increase our number of choices.

Tools

Important!

There are eleven tools that the entrepreneur uses to adjust his or her business to take advantage of the opportunities as they arise.

With the enterprising mindset, get those blinkers off, dig down into that imaginary toolkit and analyse your idea, your organisation and your competition.

Click on the "So what?" that appears on the diagrams to hear Marcus discuss the importance of each tool.