The Art of Opportunity: How to Build Growth and Ventures Through Strategic Innovation and Visual Thinking

Innovate your way toward growth using practical, research-backed frameworks

The Art of Opportunity offers a path toward new growth, providing the perspective and methods you need to make innovation happen. Written by a team of experts with both academic and industry experience—and a client roster composed of some of the world’s leading companies—this book provides you with the necessary tools to help you capture growth instead of chasing it.

The visual frameworks and research-based methodology presented in The Art of Opportunity merge business design thinking and strategic innovation to help you change your growth paradigm. You’ll learn creative and practical methods for exploring growth opportunities and employ a new approach for identifying what “opportunity” looks like in the first place. Put aside the old school way of focusing on new products and new markets, to instead applying value creation to find your new opportunity, craft your offering, design your strategy and build new growth ventures.

The changing business ecosystem is increasingly pushing traditional thinking out to pasture. New consumers and the new marketplace are demanding a profound adjustment to the way companies plan and execute growth strategies. This book gives you the tools to create your roadmap toward the new state of growth, and gain invaluable insight into a new way of thinking.

The Art of Opportunity will help you to:

• Start looking at business growth from a new perspective
• Create value for the customers, company and ecosystem
• Innovate strategically and design new business models
• Develop a new active business design thinking approach to innovation

Your company’s goal is to grow, and to turn non-customers into customers. The old ways are becoming less tenable and less cost-effective. The Art of Opportunity outlines the new growth paradigm and gives you a solid framework for putting new ideas into practice.

About the Author

Marc Sniukas (Luxembourg; www.doujak.eu, www.businessmodelgallery.com, www.sniukas.com) is a partner at Doujak Corporate Development, a global consulting company that partners with CEOs, executive teams and owners of Fortune 500s and Hidden Champions to resolve the global strategic and organizational challenges they face; and co-founder of Business Model Gallery, the world's largest business model database. Marc partners with leadership teams and their organizations to discover opportunities for new growth and develop breakthrough strategies and innovative business models to transform their organizations. He has worked with major corporations across a wide range of industries in Europe, the US, Canada, Latin America, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UAE, Turkey, China and South Africa.

Besides his corporate work, Marc is currently an adjunct professor at CEDIM, where he teaches Innovation and Business Model Innovation within the Master of Business Innovation program, and is researching business model innovation as part of Manchester Business School’s DBA program. He is on the faculty at Thnk School for Creative Leadership with campuses in Amsterdam, Vancouver and Lisbon, and teaches business model innovation to about 100 international students per year.

Parker Lee (Portland, OR; www.xplane.com) currently serves as president and EVP of business development at XPLANE, a business design consultancy firm based in Portland, OR and Amsterdam that helps large organizations clarify, communicate, and achieve their goals.

Lee leads workshops, facilitates events, and provides consulting services on strategic business design to dozens of global clients, including Cisco, Microsoft, BP, Shell, Intel, Nike, Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), Autodesk, PayPal, Bank of America, The Economist, UNICEF, The World Bank, Genentech, AT&T, and Michelin. He has presented at numerous industry events, most recently the Association of Change Management Professionals annual conferences, and the Apple CEO Conference on The Future of Media. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in organization development and long range planning from the University of California, Davis. He is currently chairman of Portland’s Business for Culture and the Arts.

Matt Morasky (Portland, OR; www.xplane.com) is a lead consultant at XPLANE, and an award-winning creative director, visual thinker, and educator. A fifteen-year veteran of the design and communications world, Morasky is an active advocate of Visual Thinking who combines his design thinking background with facilitation and visual problem solving practices to bring clarity to complex problems for clients including: American Express, British Telecom, Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, Elsevier, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Microsoft, The North Face, Proctor & Gamble, Red Bull, SwissCom, Vans, and Wrangler/Lee. Morasky is currently based in XPLANE's Portland studio. Prior to that, he helped open XPLANE’s Amsterdam office, where he lead creative efforts—building and collaborating with teams of consultants, project managers and design professionals—to help European clients navigate sticky changes. Morasky also established the Amsterdam Visual Thinking School (VTS), planning, promoting and delivering monthly VTS workshops for the creative and business communities. Most recently Matt developed and launched XPLANE's Designer Training Program, a multi-week, open-source course that introduces Visual Thinking (and design thinking) methodologies to senior level designers and problem-solvers. A natural teacher, Morasky has taught and regularly guest lectures in many Northwest design schools. He has conducted workshops on Visual Thinking throughout Europe and the United States as well as spoken on the topic for audiences at the Frontiers of Interaction conference, Rome; University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and the Oregon Market Research Association.