Selected Excerpts from White Space - The Book

White Space and Drive

White Space Strategy — 2011-04-13T07:59:19-07:00

The book Drive by Daniel Pink is a very seminal work for the pursuit of White Space Organizations. The creativity unleashed by what he calls Motivation 3.0 is a critical element of White Space thinking. I am in the process of adding an entire chapter on White Space Organizations and the management of White Space teams that employs a great deal of the thinking in Drive.

White Space organizations must embody the key elements of autonomy, mastery, and purpose in order to foster the creativity in thinking that discovering white space opportunities requires. The challenge for today's Motivation 2.0 organizations will be to make the transition to Motivation 3.0 organizations that can capture their employees most creative work.

The process of finding and capitalizing on White Spaces is not one of routine "algorithmic" work, but rather the highly creative, "heuristic" , right brain work that can identify new market opportunities and synthesize the new value propositions that will enable them. To accomplish this, organizations must encourage the conditions conducive to incubating new ideas in the way that only Motivation 3.0 can.

Lean Startup White Space

White Space Strategy — 2010-10-20T10:29:17-07:00

One of the key concepts of lean startup methodology is the MVP or minimum viable product - the bare bones product that embodies the minimum functionality required to satisfy the customer's fundamental needs. Defining the MVP becomes an exercise in reductionism whose goal is to eliminate spurious features that can be added back later based on learning from customer use.

However, during the MVP definition process, it's also important to keep the product's unique value contribution or delta-V in mind. However the MVP is defined, and whatever is subtracted, the remaining MVP must embody all of the functionality and features that comprise the new compelling value equation. Anything less sacrifices the unique value differentiation upon which the product's competitive advantage and the new market's definition is based.

Without the core increase in value upon which the new market definition is based, an MVP may fail in the market while waiting for key value components to be added in succeeding pivots. MVP must include the core increase in value (Delta-V) upon which the new market opportunity is based or the product will fail despite the methodology's advantages.

Sorry About the Hiatus

White Space Strategy — 2009-08-28T09:50:46-07:00

I know it's been way too long since I posted a new entry, but some personal and professional priorities have kept me away from the blog. In the meantime, I've been reading some really great work by Dr. Brian Glassman who just completed his Ph.D. in innovation management. You can read his blog at TechRD.com/blog.

On Monday I'll return with a whole new post for the next installment for White Space - The Book.

Introduction (Part 1)

White Space Strategy — 2009-07-07T08:24:01-07:00

Introduction

(Part 1)

The history of Silicon Valley, and of successful business in general is written in white spaces. By combining and then recombining changes in technology, value chains and business models, we create, capture and bring to the mainstream white space opportunities that reshape and redefine markets and commerce on a daily basis.

Some white spaces are additive – creating market growth by capturing new opportunities in existing markets like design for purpose in the EDA marketplace, or navigation systems in automobiles. Some white spaces are expansive – growing the size of existing markets by bringing in new market participants through expanding the market boundaries via lower price entry points and feature changes that suddenly capture an entirely new segment of a market by expanding the boundaries of your market at its extents. And finally, some white spaces represent entirely new markets as a result of creating an entirely new value proposition that creates an entirely new market space. The iPod, Tivo, Cirque de Soleil and SouthWest Airlines are all examples of this completely new value proposition white space.

Why should we care about these “White Space” opportunities? As W.Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne point out in their seminal work Blue Ocean Strategy, it’s because product and service launches in new White Spaces (what they call Blue Oceans) provide the highest growth and profit.

Despite this overwhelming evidence that pursuing new market “white spaces” yields the highest growth and profit, a recent poll by the Innovating to Win blog shows that less than 40% of the poll respondents look for Whitespace opportunities in defining an entirely new product. Clearly the majority of businesses still depend on product extension and audience expansion for the majority of their new opportunities.

White Space is about changing this balance by providing a complete and dependable methodology for discovering white space opportunities and capturing them.

White Space - The Origin

White Space Strategy — 2009-05-19T08:13:36-07:00

The Idea
White Space is not only a book about market innovation and how to identify opportunities to create, capture, sustain and profit from new markets, it's also the fundamental story of innovation in the Silicon Valley in particular and the world in general. Creating new markets through innovative new products and value propositions has powered our economic systems since the beginning of time. The process of market opportunity discovery and development of new, innovative value has changed and become more complex as our society has evolved, but the foundational premise of delivering new value to create new market opportunities remains the same.
In today's turbulent economy, this market focused innovation process is needed more than ever, and we need to work hard and fast to innovate our way out of the dilemma of economic stagnation by creating real, relevant, value again.
The Process
Over the next several months we will be blogging the majority of the material to be included in the book - White Space - that will be published late this year. We'll blog sections of chapters every week and invite your commentary and suggestions for additions, modifications and deletions. Together we'll write the definitive volume on new market creation.
Our Invitation
We invite you to come with us as we examine the lessons of the history and process of innovation and propose a methodology for market innovation that creates new, relevant value and sustainable competitive advantage in new markets. Welcome to White Space - The Book.