Understanding+The+Opportunity+I

**Understanding The Opportunity**
Thursday, February 17, 2011 <>

Topic overview:
Today we will begin exploring techniques for the second stage of innovative product development: Understanding the Opportunity. In today's class we will look at a variety of techniques for developing a much deeper understanding of the opportunity. As with the previous phase, the goals of this phase are not to define a great new product or service (yet). The goals are to deeply understand the opportunity that you think you have identified, the stakeholders in a solution, and the specific ways that the stakeholders will find value in any solution that you propose. Based on this understanding, you can define the key attributes that your product or solution will need to possess. In general, a good articulation of these values will guide your product definition and design process, but still allow multiple ways for you to bring something to market with the desired attributes.

===**Preparation for class:** ===


 * Prior to class you need to read: **
 * **Chapter 4 ****(pages 21-26) **** of [SSD09] - The Innovator's To **olkit, by Silverstein, Samuel, and DeCarlo.
 * Chapter 3 of [KL01] Tom Kelly with Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation.

You will likely find it helpful to also read chapters 1 and 2 of [KL01] to better understand chapter 3, but we will focus on the techniques discussed in chapter 3 in our class discussion.

===**Reference materials:** === Slides: