Evaluating an Entrepreneurial Business Opportunity for an IT-company in the Business Intelligence Industry
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The entrepreneurial business opportunity is a phenomenon that often pervades small firms. Vesper (1990) has argued that the underlying idea of a new venture is the most important key element of a new venture. Cooper et al. (1995) in turn expanded upon this notion and proposed that information is the most important element. There is however seemingly a lack of business research focusing on ways of interpreting information to evaluate entrepreneurial business opportunities. This research aims to contribute to the field of entrepreneurial business opportunity evaluation by investigating a potential entrepreneurial business opportunity stemming from a customer request for the startup BI Partner. The purpose of this research is to reduce market uncertainty for the startup BI Partner and to evaluate this request in terms of constituting as a business opportunity in regards to their current business model. This study has been designed as a case-study and the analysis and methods of collecting customer data has been grounded in the customer discovery phase of the customer development methodology (Blank & Dorf, 2012). The data collection of this research was firstly comprised of three interviews with the pursuing company to establish an understanding of their current business model and their hypotheses regarding the new venture. Secondly, five interviews were conducted with customers to gain an understanding of their current work routine and in particular their problems related to this routine. The findings of this research gave some indications that there were generalizable traits in regards to a work routine shared among customers where problems were identified. This work routine was a checkup-routine which could be generalized into two parts: (1) the routine's work process and its outcome. The biggest opportunity was deemed to be to automate the work process for several customers currently operating with a manual labor-intensive process. The study furthermore found that it is very likely that a single offering can be developed to solve customer problems to both generalized parts of the routine, and that this offering should be developed putting much emphasis on having it being compatible with their current work routine. Finally, findings indicated that pursuing this new venture is very likely to be compatible with their current business model and strengthen their revenue streams through more frequent consultancy work due to better and increased customer relations.
Author: Erik Thorsén
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2164051471