Engaging the Process

Gaining a competitive Edge

Businesses that build and maintain a coherent Opportunity Architecture perform measurably better than businesses that don't.

Schedule an Executive Briefing

Opportunity Architecture defines the operational structure of a commercial opportunity from which an effective strategy emerges.

Considering OA?

Step 1: challenge our research

Assess a previous initiative

Run a previous initiative - one in which you participated - through the Business Initiative Survey to see whether your experience supports or contradicts the theory that Opportunity Architecture is correlated with outcome.

10 minutes

Does your outcome correlate with your Opportunty Architecture score?

If so, go on to step 2.

(If not, we'd love to understand why!)

Step 2: Attend an introductory meeting

Learn about Opportunity Architecture, how it can help you develop a more effective strategy and identify hidden risks, and where it might apply in your organization.

Step 2A: Executive overview

Purpose

Learn about Opportunity Architecture, review what the research has revealed about business initiative performance, and explore how architectural weaknesses and blind spots can impact your organization's initiatives, investments, and growth objectives.

This introduction is also designed to determine if and where Opportunity Architecture may be useful to your organization, and whether further assessment is warranted.

Step 2B: Conduct an initial (pilot) assessment

Purpose

Assess the architectural integrity of a current business initiative to uncover weaknesses, blind spots, and emerging risks before they impair performance.

The guided step is designed to determine where Opportunity Architecture may be useful to your organization, and whether further assessment is warranted.

Step 3: Institutionalize Opportunity Architecture

Incorporate Opportunity Architecture into your planning, execution and governance processes to minimize risk and maximize performance.

3A: Training overview

The chart below shows the skills to you need to acquire, and their depth, depending on your role.

...by Role

LEVEL

ROLE

SKILL SET

DEPTH

OA Foundations

Executives, managers, governance members, and practitioners

Understand Opportunity Architecture, Commercialization Drift, the underlying architecture, and why it matters.

Foundation

OA Practitioner

Initiative leaders, functional managers, and designated OA leads

Be able to build, assess, strengthen, and maintain an Opportunity Architecture.

Deep

OA Governance

Executives, boards, and governance committee members

Be able to interpret OA reporting, recognize drift, challenge assumptions, evaluate risk, and determine when intervention is warranted.

Oversight

OA Facilitator

Selected internal experts and OA champions

Be able to facilitate assessments and workshops, guide application of the methodology, and support other users throughout the organization.

Advanced

The skills you should acquire in order to leverage OA depend on your role in the management process.

...core curriculum

MODULE

FOCUS

WHAT PARTICIPANTS LEARN

1

Why Initiatives Fail

Commercialization Drift, failure normalization, what the research reveals, and why conventional financial and operating measures often identify problems too late.

2

Opportunity Architecture Fundamentals

The core elements of Opportunity Architecture, including prospects, customer needs, products, applications, segments, and target markets, and how they function as an interdependent system.

3

Derived Commercial Logic

How value proposition, differentiation, positioning, strategic direction, and related commercial logic emerge from the underlying architecture.

4

Architectural Integrity & Drift

How weaknesses, ambiguity, inconsistency, misalignment, and changing assumptions create Commercialization Drift and increase business risk.

5

Assessment

How to evaluate an existing initiative, distinguish evidence from assumption, identify architectural gaps, and determine where further investigation is required.

6

Architecture Development

How to build, clarify, strengthen, and document an Opportunity Architecture for a new or existing business initiative.

7

From Architecture to Action

How to translate Opportunity Architecture into strategy, priorities, decisions, execution, and functional activity across the organization.

8

Governance

How architectural integrity is monitored, reported, challenged, reassessed, and corrected over time to detect and manage drift.

The curriculum is organized around the competencies required to understand, assess, build, apply, and govern Opportunity Architecture.

3B: Put Opportunity Architecture into practice

Opportunity Architecture enables and enforces a discipline that can set new initiatives on the road to success, and put drifting initiatives back on the road to success.

step 4: Governance & Due Diligence

Once you understand the foundations of Opportunity Architecture, and how a coherent architecture can increase the probablility of success, you can use it to manage initiatives, or to evaluate them as investments.