Business opportunities: following up on the goal
How to identify, work on, and sustain opportunities in complex environments without setting limits.
Business opportunities rarely appear as perfectly formulated ideas or “wow” moments. In practice, they usually arise from observing something that doesn’t quite fit: a need that the customer solves inefficiently, an unexpected use of a service, or a technology that begins to enable things that were not possible before.
Working well in these situations has less to do with inspiration than with attention, method, and consistency. It’s about looking closely at what happens in everyday life.
How can business opportunities be defined?
An opportunity is not born big or closed. It starts out small, incomplete, and sometimes difficult to explain and visualize. Shaping it means naming it, defining it, and understanding whether there is a real problem behind it that is worth solving. In itself, the opportunity must be conceptualized as an “entity” without limits.
Therefore, rather than talking about ideas, it is better to talk about well-understood problems. When the problem is clear, the possible paths begin to sort themselves out almost on their own. Many industrial stories follow this logic: Yamaha applied its technical knowledge in a different context, without changing its essence: the same precision, vibration control, and technical excellence it used in pianos was later applied to motorcycles. Or in the case of Tesla, which understood that its product goes beyond the electric vehicle; it is a complete ecosystem of services, where software, data, and connectivity are as essential as the car itself.
What are some ways to identify them?
Opportunities can come in many ways. Some appear because someone knocks on the door: a partner, a startup, or a player from another sector with whom to explore something new. Others arise from observing trends, analyzing what is working in other markets, or detecting movements that have not yet fully arrived. And sometimes they appear in much more informal contexts: a conversation with professionals from other industries may reveal that they have already worked on a category or service that you are beginning to analyze from a different perspective.
And many opportunities arise from within, when customer data, technological capabilities, and business knowledge intersect. Connecting these dots—which already exist—is one of the most powerful levers for generating new lines of value and, without a doubt, one of the most exciting parts for those of us who work in the field of innovation.
What are the main components for identifying a business opportunity?
When analyzing an opportunity with some perspective, four elements tend to recur. The first is the customer: understanding what they need, where they encounter friction, and how they cope today. The second is the company exploring the opportunity: what assets it has and how far it can realistically go.
The third is the context: market, technology, regulation, and timing. Not all ideas work equally well at every stage.
And the fourth is to look outside your own perimeter. Observe how other players—both inside and outside the sector—are expanding their value proposition, entering areas that were not their core business, or building broader ecosystems.
The moves by neobanks toward connectivity, incorporating services such as eSIM or MVNO models, or the evolution of content platforms toward new models based on advertising, live events, or more integrated experiences, are good examples of how companies are expanding their value proposition beyond their original core.
These moves not only open up new sources of revenue, but also redefine the rules of the game and create new opportunities at the intersection of sectors that previously seemed separate, both for the player itself and for potential collaborators.
What steps should be taken to carry out a market analysis?
Market analysis cannot be a static exercise or a document that is done once and then filed away. It is a living process that accompanies the opportunity.
It all starts with something simple: who is the proposal aimed at, what problem does it seek to solve, and why now? From there, it is advisable to build an initial framework that allows you to decide whether it is worth moving forward.
A comprehensive business case is not always necessary from the outset, but it is important to avoid paralysis by analysis. Many opportunities are lost more through excessive caution than through lack of potential.
Testing, adjusting, and learning are part of the process. Understanding the starting point (AS-IS), imagining where you want to go (TO-BE), and moving forward through continuous cycles of improvement is often much more effective than trying to have all the answers from day one.
What role does listening to customers play?
Listening to customers goes far beyond surveys or interviews. Listening means observing real behaviors, analyzing usage data, and detecting patterns that are not always verbalized.
In a telco, the responsible use of first-party data—always aggregated and anonymized—allows us to understand how digital services are consumed and how habits evolve. Many small signals appear: when something is used without thinking, when it stops being used, when it simply accompanies.
Added to this is the constant exchange of learning with partners and analysts. Looking at the same data from other angles and even combining our own with that of third parties helps to discover opportunities that would not arise from a single perspective.
To what extent do new technologies influence business opportunities?
New technologies have clearly accelerated the identification and development of opportunities. Today, it is possible to explore ideas, test hypotheses, and build initial narratives much more quickly.
However, the real value lies in what is integrated without making a fuss. Technology is our colleague, our co-pilot. It usually appears just when it is needed, simplifies, takes care of things, and becomes almost invisible.
In the case of artificial intelligence, it is now possible to access recent information, synthesize it, and convert it into multiple formats that help align teams and make decisions more quickly.
Technology is the means that allows opportunities to take shape: it accelerates, scales, and converts ideas into real solutions when applied to specific problems, experiences that can be improved, or processes that need to be simplified. From a videoconference to a chromatograph or a supercomputer, technology—in all its forms—streamlines the definition and development of new opportunities.
And perhaps that is why there is something that is repeated so often in both people and organizations: many give up before reaching the goal. Not because they stop working, but because they stop aspiring. They decide that “this is good enough” and turn that limit into something normal. When there are no longer any clear certainties, when it’s time to keep refining, testing, and adjusting.
Working on business opportunities is not about reaching a specific goal quickly, but about understanding that value usually comes later: when you iterate, when you connect what you’ve learned, and when you push a little harder than what is considered “reasonable.”
Continuing after the goal means not settling for the first version, not closing the door on what can still evolve, and assuming that many of the best opportunities are built in that final stretch where not everyone continues. That’s where, often, the difference is made.
