Scenario Graph: Discovering New Business Opportunities and Failure Modes

Abstract

Companies struggle to identify new business opportunities based on their core competence be it products or services. When a company focuses on improving current offerings or is too involved in them, it has difficulty discovering new applications for them. Scenario Graph is an original design method for products or services that aids design teams to envision four types of information while in the market definition phase: potential user locations, activities associated with the location, user circumstances, and the corresponding user state. By using Scenario Graph, design teams are better able to capture new values, scenarios, and behaviors of potential customers. This knowledge captured in the fuzzy front end stage can then be translated into inputs to other Design for X (dfX) tools to improve the definition of the product or service. Another benefit of the tool is that it directs the design team to discover unidentified failure modes of the current offerings by identifying unintended user scenarios. In this paper, a detailed guide, along with case studies demonstrates the usefulness of the tool when applied in the early phase of product or service development. Scenario Graph will assist design teams and managers in discovering new product or service opportunities.

Effects of improvisational behavior on entrepreneurial activities and firm performance: the moderating roles of firm size and business experience

“…Secondly, the ability to work well under pressure is another key reason why entrepreneurs with improvisational behavior can be effective in opportunity recognition. Generally, opportunity recognition in business requires a vast amount of time and effort, as the entrepreneurs must extensively scan the environment to spot new opportunities (Kim et al, 2009;Zhou and Charoensukmongkol, 2022). Thus, opportunity recognition seems to be an activity that creates high pressure for entrepreneurs.…”

Analysis and Design Methodology for Recognizing Opportunities and Difficulties for Product-based Services

“…Here, the designer can describe the scheme by modifying service design patterns extracted from the case database by matching attribute patterns. Typical design patterns include maintenance service (adjustment expansion), rental service (commitment expansion), and content distribution and updating service (territory expansion), which appear in Table 1 (types 7,8,9). Most services consist of a combination of patterns (types 1-6).…”

7.3.3 Preliminary Validation of Scenario‐based Design for Amorphous Systems

“…Scenario-based Design for Amorphous Systems (Kim, 2007) is a framework that helps design teams visualize, organize, and communicate potential scenarios in which the system will provide value. Figure 1 Here we define scenario as an account or synopsis of a series of events in a setting which contains the answers to Where, What, When and Who: Where refers to a place or a location, What refers to activities or events, When refers to circumstances, and Who refers to people or parties associated with the activities or situations.…”