Integrating new possibilities into planning

By following the steps in the preceding section, you will be able to identify "white spaces" in your business or "blue ocean markets." These lead to (hopefully many) new possibilities. You need to take them through a high level vetting process with your business leaders to ascertain the validity of pursuing them. The number of possibilities open to you is not necessarily important; it is more important that they have a high strategic impact for your business. The journey into big data can potentially bring obscure ideas to the forefront, which can seem very attractive at first glance. You need to consider everything and then make a move based on organizational appetite and competitive threats.

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Tip

Novelty is difficult. It is rather challenging to integrate new possibilities into your strategic business planning. One effective technique for this effort is to transport your current world problems to a different world and solve the problem in the new world using data and technology. Then, bring back the solution to your current world and apply it. Following this, develop a plan to scale up the solution in your current world.