Pathways to Scale: Evolving Markets
Relying on market research when building an innovative new business can be a bit like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. So said the late Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop International. But market research can be done in a number of different ways — including with an eye on the future. That is our plan at Volans.
Our ambition is to develop a futures-oriented market intelligence resource that can help businesses and governments improve their innovation processes and investments. We aim to do this by focusing on the ‘10 Divides’ spotlighted in The Power of Unreasonable People (Harvard Business Press, 2008) – and related market gaps, opportunities and pathways to scale of leading social innovators.
As part of our client services offering, we aim to help particular clients and partners make sense of tomorrow’s markets, as they work through their strategies, plans and portfolios, business models and engagement processes.
Market Research: The 10 Divides
The 10 divides analyzed below can be seen as lenses or portals through which tomorrow’s markets can be viewed, as entrepreneurs seek to bridge these divides by introducing changes in pricing, quality and distribution channels for various products and services.
- Demography
- Finance
- Nutrition
- Natural Resources
- Environment
- Health
- Gender
- Education
- Digitech
- Security
For each divide, we intend to kick off with a set of basic questions. These are intended to provoke discussion with key actors in the field — and with others interested in developing and scaling market-based solutions to social and environmental challenges:
- What are the key trends associated with this market gap?
- Who is already doing market research in this area — and with what results?
- Where are the most interesting market blueprints and prototypes evolving?
- What do we know about the relevant pathways to scale?
- What do the public, private and citizen sectors need to do next?
- What are the best business school cases in this area?
- Which are the most useful books and websites?
- What questions still need to be asked?
The OPENS Framework
To support this research we are developing a 5-stage model — the ‘OPENS’ framework — which locates innovations in one of five stages of development. Using the OPENS framework to conduct research and facilitate workshops, we aim to help leaders in the public, private and citizen sectors to support the scaling up to market of innovative solutions to social and environmental challenges.
Next steps
We will develop this research agenda alongside partners and sponsors who are interested in advancing the insight and intelligence in specific markets and industries. For further information or to express an interest in taking part, please contact John Elkington or Alejandro Litovsky.
Our efforts are part-funded by the third year of a 3-year grant from the Skoll Foundation, building on earlier work on social entrepreneurs and corporate social intrapreneurs carried out at SustainAbility. We also acknowledge the kind permission of Harvard Business School Press to reproduce Chapter 3 of The Power of Unreasonable People in the 10 sub-sections on market gaps and opportunities.