New Ideas: Knowing When to Hold 'Em and When to Fold 'Em

Let’s face it. New business ideas are exciting, but they’re also tough. It’s exhilarating to imagine the potential for success, but you also have to carefully weigh the risk of failure. How do you decide when to draw, fold, or pass?

For most organizations there are three broad categories of considerations, as follows:

1. Quality of the business opportunity in terms of:

• The size of the market

• The quality of the market (e.g. addressability, concentration, competitive intensity, etc)

• The quality of the business model (e.g. feasibility, customer appeal, scalability, etc)

1. Alignment of the business opportunity with your organization in terms of:

• Alignment with mission, passions, and culture

• Alignment with core competencies

• Alignment with key assets

1. Affordability of the business opportunity in terms of

• Money

• Time

Based on these observations, LaunchPath has developed a simple Excel-based "Business Evaluation Tool" that empowers organizations to run any business concept through a 25-point inspection to objectively score it's potential. For a free copy of the LaunchPath Business Evaluation Tool (BET) just send an email message with your request to: info@launchpathinc.com. We will be happy to share it with you.

Screen Shot of the LaunchPath Business Evaluation Tool (BET)