Here's a quick quiz for you. Is it easier to get
A: 1% of a huge, established market? or B: 100% of a completely new one?
If you work for Apple, you might have picked B. But too often when companies embark on innovation projects, they pick A: that is, they start by believing that nothing could be easier than to capture a small chunk of a very big, existing market.
But to unleash the power of innovation to capture big markets, what matters is not how big any existing market is but how many people are wrestling with some problem that no current offering really solves, what we here at Innosight call the "important and unsatisfied jobs" of consumers — and non-consumers. When sizing an innovation opportunity, what you should be looking for are jobs what are widely held and currently poorly served, not lots of people who haven't bought your own products yet.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Are You Targeting a Phantom Market? - Robyn Bolton - Harvard Business Review
