Identifying Small Business Opportunities

What are Business Opportunities?

Opportunities are conditions (or emerging conditions) within the market that could enable the business to generate profitable business growth, give the business an advantage over their competitors, or enable the company to cover an external threat.

Opportunities might include:

• An opening in a new market segment,
• Ways to improve or expand the product line,
• Falling trade barriers,
• New technology, etc.

Using the information you gathered while undertaking your market analysis, and your own knowledge about the industry, list all of the potential opportunities for you business in the opportunities section of the SWOT Analysis Template.

When is an Opportunity really an Opportunity?

Have a look at everything you added to your opportunities list. Which opportunities are most likely to bring you the most benefit?

Again, rank the opportunities as you did your strengths and weaknesses, and concentrate on the top three or four.

At this point you need to take a bit of a step back from your own business model and try to look at each of the opportunities as objectively as possible.

Ignoring your own internal capabilities and structure for the moment, consider what a business (another business) would need to ‘look like’ to be able to grab that opportunity and take advantage of it.

• What kind of structure would they need?
• What skills or expertise would they require?
• What production or distribution systems?
• Marketing methods?
• Financing?
• Partnerships?
• Suppliers?
• Technology?

Once you have a clear picture of the ‘ideal opportunity grabbing business’, compare its profile to your own.

Have a look at your strengths, do you have all of them or would you need to develop new ones? How would you go about it and how long would it take? Can you realistically see your business being able to gear up to take advantage of the opportunity you have identified? If so, what do you need to do to make it happen?

Document your finding on your business opportunities on the SWOT Analysis Action Sheet before you move on to look at your business threats.