Best Opportunities for 2012 (and beyond)

Entrepreneurs are always striving to get ahead of the latest and greatest business opportunities. They may get their insights from books, shop talk, or Web-based business resources, but the best tips usually come from experienced entrepreneurs who have already been there and done that.

At a recent SME conference put on by Financial Executives International, I asked a roundtable of veteran business leaders to identify today’s biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs that are hoping to expand their current businesses or start new ones.

Here’s a summary of the exciting opportunities each entrepreneur cited:

Julia N. Dumanian is former president and CEO of Cambridge Memorial Hospital. She was named Canada’s Hospital Leader of the Year in 2007 for her passionate and transformational leadership.

“I think human capital is where it’s at,” said Dumanian. She believes Canada’s secret weapon is the “tremendous young people with great skills” graduating from our colleges and universities. She encourages entrepreneurs to tap their brainpower by setting up internships to get these graduates into your business “and really exploit some of these brilliant minds, especially on the technology side.” Given the tough time many grads have had finding good jobs, she notes, “We can help them help us grow our businesses.”

Murray G. K. Davidson is chair of RHI Investments LLC, with private-equity investments in real estate, utilities and pipeline consulting, and advanced technology. He is a senior partner of three specialty consultancies, focusing on financial services, utilities, and health care.

Davidson sees opportunities in all aspects of health care in Canada, the U.S., and around the world. Given the accelerating changes in technology and demographics, he says, you can't go wrong exploring solutions in “anything related to your health” such as health technologies, health processes, and personal monitoring and management of individual health. He is also bullish on new medical devices, particularly for in-home use, and new approaches for taming out-of-control health-information systems. “Cost improvement, performance improvement, waiting list reduction, capital management – you name it,” he says.

Davidson believes in consumer products, too, especially those targeted to Asia and Latin America. He’s also keen on specialty products aimed at young people, especially personal technologies. He said he’s working with a company on a new device that Apple is considering adding to its “i” family of products (iPad, iPod, etc.). He says it’s specifically aimed at consumers 25 and under.

Tom Enright, president and CEO of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute, is former CEO of CNW Group Ltd. His expertise lies in strategic planning, branding, sales and marketing.

To find opportunities, Enright advises, “look at the places where there are societal pain points”. He cites the debate that preceded the mandatory introduction of automobile seatbelts. “There was a lot of turmoil before we finally got there, then everyone had them.” Now, he notes, “there’s a huge societal issue about whether we can afford the cost of ‘green’ energy, so there’s got to be opportunities there.”

Enright is also high on opportunities with information technology, but especially those related to social media. “No one knows how exactly to use it, so there are great opportunities there.”

Finally, he predicts the next “big” commodity opportunity will be an area Canadians know well: fresh water.

Gerald A. Lokash is an experienced entrepreneur, consultant, and senior insolvency practitioner. He also owns several commercial real-estate companies.

Lokash believes data is the key to future business opportunities. Today’s IT systems allow business owners to measure every aspect of their business, and compare their efficiency to other organizations. “It’s inconceivable how much data has been accumulated about just about everything,” he says. “I think opportunity resides in how you use the data that's available to you in your company and your industry.”

He says companies such as communications giant BCE have expanded exponentially by exhaustively analyzing their own operational data. Lokash believes other companies can grow by understanding every inch of their business and how to achieve more from each asset. “There’s huge opportunity in accessing data in a way that can help you understand and steer your businesses forward.”

The conference buzzed with the optimism entrepreneurs always feel when they think about unmet market needs. How can your business take advantage of these golden opportunities?

“This post brought to you by American Express Canada. Check out their new Small Business Facebook Page here and stay tuned to find out who will soar their business to new heights in the Take Off with American Express Contest.”

Your Next Big Export Opportunity?

Three years ago I worked on a feature for PROFIT Magazine about opportunities for Canadian exporters in Nigeria. Some people snickered.

Chronically broke, tragically and corruptly misgoverned, Nigeria has been the poster boy for failed African regimes. In fact, with its difficulties enforcing the law and its subsequent reputation as ground zero for spam Internet scams – not to mention its inability to secure its own oil refineries from terrorists – Nigeria had become a laughing stock.

A sad fate for an English-speaking country of 140 million people brimming with natural resources. In 2004, per capita GDP was just $430, compared to $444 in 1977.

But all that may be changing. An article from INSEAD, the France-based international business school, sees reassuring signs at last of a turnaround in Nigeria.

* The crackdown on corruption has led to the seizure of $5 billion in assets for the state.

* With the election in 2007 of president Umaru Yar'Adua, Nigeria has now held three elections in a row without a coup d’état – which some observers consider a signal to invest.

* Government fiscal reforms have broken the link between oil prices and government spending. Between 2003 and 2006, foreign reserves increased fivefold to about $38 billion. (They're now around $$60 billion.) The government is nearly debt-free. (Take that, George Bush!)

* Since 2003, Nigeria’s GDP growth has averaged about 7% a year.

* Despite record-high oil prices, non-oil revenue is playing a bigger role. Agriculture contributes 42% of Nigeria's GDP.

There are still challenges, to be sure, including inadequate power supplies, roads and public transportation, and issues around the enforcement of contracts and a national ID system. But with improved governance and rising revenues, these issues can now be addressed.

Oil infrastructure, roads, transit, agriculture, power, the beginnings of a stable banking system. Opportunities for Canadian exporters, engineers and service providers?

What do you think?

Read the complete story here.

Related story: Can Western business afford to ignore Africa any longer?

33 Ways to Change the World

The current issue of Wired magazine has a great feature called “Why Things Suck!” It lists 33 things that drive the magazine’s writers crazy – everything from laptop batteries to Ticketmaster and out-of-season tomatoes.

Since we all know that every problem is an opportunity for somebody, this issue is actually the ideal guide to some of today’s most promising entrepreneurial opportunities. Wherever there’s a complaint, there’s an opening for a new service, product or approach. And when the complaint gets written up in a mass-circulation magazine, it probably resonates with a lot of people. Which means your reward for solving the problem will be all the greater.

So here is Wired’s list of 33 things that suck. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can click on each one and go straight to the magazine’s specific writeup. But I think the real value of this list is in getting you thinking about all the parts of life today that you think are broken and need fixing. Then you explore the opportunities that are right for you.

Here’s the list.

The Things That Suck
Air travel
Batteries
Booze
Car alarms
Credit cards
Customer service
DVD sound
Evite
Fuel economy
Hearing aids
Infertility treatments
Junk mail
Knees and backs
Medical records
Office copiers
Plastic packaging
Prescription drugs
Printer cartridges
Radio
Roads
Robots
Science
Spam filters
Subscription cards
Teleconferencing
Ticket purchasing
Tomatoes
Traffic
Vending machines
Web video
Whiteboards
Wireless speakers

What drives you crazy? Feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment, below.

Find the opportunity you're looking for!

Lots of people want to start a business, but don't have a clear idea of what they want to do – or how to assess an opportunity when they see one. If this describes you, here’s a document that can help.

Small Business BC is the British Columbia arm of the CanadaBusiness network of small business advisory organizations across the country. For my money, Small Business BC does the best job of any of them. Its website is bursting with great business-management information – and you don't have to live in B.C. to benefit.

One of the best opportunity guides I've seen is a Small Business BC guide with the underwhelming title, Business Development Concepts. What it really is is 39 pages of entrepreneurial gold.

The document offers 30 or more strategies for starting or expanding a business, by finding new product ideas, identifying new market opportunities or simply taking a different approach to an existing market.

This paper gives you everything you need to start exploring an opportunity. It describes a specific opportunity (say, Capitalizing on a Growth Trend), offers some examples, and then provides three to five bullet points describing “How to Do It.” Then it sparks your thinking by offering three to five key questions you should ask if you decide to investigate any of these niches.

Here’s an example of the format, so you’ll see how easy it is to use.

Cover Market Gaps or Shortages
Market gaps or shortages can occur when a needed product or service is not available or when customer demand is greater than the current available supply. Opportunities then exist for someone to step in and meet that demand.

Some Examples
1. Each summer, the demand for rental houseboats was greater than the supply of boats available in a community resort area. A company began building houseboats to sell and complemented its sales program by renting the unsold units to the local resorts during the peak season, enabling them to place a reduced pricing on these and later sell them as demos (resulting in more sales with no net loss of income).
2. A hotel employee noticed that there was a demand for a mattress repair service and none existed. She quickly signed contracts with several hotels and opened a mattress repair business.
3. A computer store employee who realized that there was no well-developed source of second-hand computers for clients on a budget opened a second-hand computer store.

How To Do It
1. To find situations in which needed products or services are not available or in short supply:
o Ask distributors, agents and retailers what items they have difficulty obtaining.
o Check delivery times and availability for orders of popular products and services.
o Ask companies to identify services that they need but have difficulty obtaining; and listen to people when they complain about products they cannot find or mention services they wish were available.
2. Look for potential supply shortages caused by companies going out of business, changing their production focus or shutting down temporarily. You can do this by:
o Watching out for such news in newspapers, particularly on the business pages.
o Reading trade publications.
o Analyzing lists of companies in receivership or bankruptcy.

Key Questions
What market gaps am I aware of?
What supply shortages am I aware of?
How could I find other market gaps and shortages?
What market gaps and shortages could I meet by providing needed products or services?
Which potential customers have indicated that my perceived gap/shortage is genuine?

If you're looking for new opportunities, this is the real deal: lots of ideas to start you thinking and point you in the right direction. You can read or download Business Development Concepts here.

The unnamed author deserves a medal for initiative, clarity, and just plain “getting it.”

Shedding Light on LEDs

I've just learned that CBC radio runs a daily business show, The Business Network, at 5:45 a.m.! (Make up your own CBC joke here.)

Some of the “guest columnist" contributions are pretty interesting. Fortunately, you can read these “columns online,” categorized either by date or by author, at http://www.cbc.ca/money/moneytalks/.

Reading at random, I discovered an interesting by Duncan Stewart, Director of Research for Deloitte Canada and an occasional contributor to the Financial Post. The title, “2008 will be a good year for the LED.”

Why should you care about light-emitting diodes? Because they're energy-efficient, they last nearly forever, and they're taking over the lighting industry.

LEDs, says Stewart, “are 20 to 30 times more energy-efficient than standard incandescent lightbulbs” – and seven to 10 times more efficient than compact fluorescents. And prices are falling: “as a result of various semi-conductor improvements the price of them has come way down.”

“As an investor,” says Stewart, “I think this whole LED area in 2008 is going to be an absolutely fascinating area. The problem of course for investors is finding the right ones to play. Intellectual property matters a lot, there's a lot of lawsuits in this area, and some of the companies that are good at it aren't exactly pure plays.” If it’s an investment play, and the field is so muddy, you can bet there are still lots of entrepreneurial opportunities here, too.

To read Duncan’s original column, click here.
You can also read the comments from listeners/readers. Some of them seem very well informed. They offer interesting insights into the development of LED technology and the problems with commercialization.
You might also check out the website of Victoria-based Carmanah Technologies, one of Canada’s top success stories in the LED field. (They also suppplied the photos.)

Every problem is an opportunity for someone

There’s gotta be a business opportunity in here somewhere.

A recent Globe & Mail online poll asked the question, “After the holiday season, how do you feel?”

Out of nearly 6,000 respondents, 31% said they felt “more refreshed.”

The other 69% say they feel “totally exhausted.”

How could your business help these exhausted consumers next year?