How did you come up with the idea ?

I was part of a senior executive program within a large corporate where I held a senior management position. One rung under the top level. Our challenge, as part of the program, was to develop a real business opportunity that we had to pitch to the executive committee for their endorsement. The opportunity had to involve a merger, acquisition or joint venture.

The task sent a large majority of the elite program members into a tail spin. I saw it is an opportunity to explore where value opportunities were laying dormant within the organisation.

To get my creative juices flowing I performed a value chain analysis of the business. The business is quite complex so it was a reasonable task to get the analysis to a level where I could start to identify the opportunities.

I identified three opportunities within the business.  I described them in very simple terms to help trigger further thought processes.

I then explored each opportunity with an open creative mind. When hitting an obstacle or a stale patch I descried the obstacle and post noted it on my desk to consider other ways to look at the idea. After addressing the obstacles that I could, I culled the list down to the most compelling, interesting and potentially valuable idea that seemed most achievable.

Then started the research to see if some of the technical obstacles which remained could be overcome. After completing the research I learned that the key remaining obstacles I was wrestling with would actually make the opportunity even more compelling.

I will blog about the pitch to Executive Management in my next blog.