Navigating Market Opportunities Certificate (N.M.O Certificate)

Dates of Certificate Program:
November 7 – 12 PM to 1:30 PM EDT
November 8– 12 PM to 1:30 PM EDT

ICSB is working harder than ever to enhance our community’s value. After months of preparation, we are ready to open registration for the first-ever specialized, online certification covering the Market Opportunity Navigator with Dr. Marc Gruber and Dr. Sharon Tal (originally presented in their published book, Where to Play).

Overview

As a business transforms from its creation to implementation, identifying and prioritizing market opportunities is an essential practice. However, it is often one of the most challenging tasks that managers face when striving to increase their company’s growth capacities.

Traversing market opportunities is too often left to a simple chance when, in reality, anyone can capitalize on available market opportunities if they are able to understand the systematic frameworks at play. Fully understanding these frameworks and tools will allow you to make informed strategic choices and will present your applications for gaining team cohesion around your choices.

During this certificate program, you will be introduced to the “Market Opportunity Navigator,” which is a new and innovative business tool that provides a thorough perspective to find different potential market domains. Having been recently adopted for the Lean Toolset by Steve Blank, the Navigator, first, introduces you to a wide-lens perspective which aids in finding different potential market domains for your business before you zoom in or focus with lean simulations.

Simply put, the framework covers three key questions:

  1. Which opportunities exist for you?
    From which, you will learn to identify market opportunities stemming from the company’s core competencies.
  2. Which opportunities are most attractive for you? 
    Which you can then use to address key questions and evaluate possible opportunities systematically.
  3. Which opportunities should you focus on? 
    Then,  strategic roadmap.

Using real-life examples, we will comprehensively explain the business tool and its dedicated worksheets, demonstrating how it pairs seamlessly with other tools, such as the Business Model Canvas and Customer Discovery, while giving practical information on how to best implement it for your company’s specific needs.

Join the thousands of global companies (of all sizes) that have already begun to navigate their market opportunities to unleash new growth!

The structure of this certificate program includes 2 live, 90-minute sessions and 4 pre-recorded modules.

The Business Market Navigator allowed me get great insights about where to start a business. All the methodology used during the course were fantastic. The sessions was simple and as deep as it could be, simply amazing. I’m way more confident to apply this methodology into my own life and really anxious to share all the knowledge I got with my friends.

Luca Cyrillo Gusella

Student of University of São Paulo

ICSB GLOBAL NAVIGATING MARKET OPPORTUNITIES CERTIFICATE MODULES

Module 1: Where to Play – 3 Steps for Discovering Your Most Valuable Market Opportunities

In this introductory webinar, Prof. Marc Gruber introduces the “Market Opportunity Navigator” from his book “Where to Play.” This new business tool is featured in the Lean Toolset Blank and is widely adopted by startups, scaleups, educators, and consultants.

Module 2: Diverging before Converging- Identifying New Market Opportunities for Your Innovation

This module will discuss the necessity of adopting a structured discovery process for start-ups and SMEs. WE will go through an overview of the tool and, then, dive into the identification step, which is step 1 of the Market Opportunity Navigator. We will provide you with a dedicated worksheet and multiple examples in order to make sure that you are fully prepared for the following steps.

Module 3: Setting a Clear Strategic Focus- Evaluating and Prioritizing New Market Opportunities

Throughout this module, you will be presented with a systematic evaluation process that allows managers to assess and compare varied sets of growth options. Applying dedicated worksheets (i.e., steps 2 and 3 of the Market Opportunity Navigator), we will show multiple examples and explain how ventures can create and design a smart strategic focus.

Module 4: Tips and Resources for Successful Implementation in Your Organization

Presenting summary examples, this module discusses the processes that can be adapted for social ventures. Then we will consider different formats of application in small and large companies and present a wealth of free supporting materials for managers, educators, and consultants.

Module 5: Managing the corporate innovation pipeline

Enlarging the scope of coverage of the Market Opportunity Navigator as a tool in the management of your corporate innovation pipeline, we will draw on McKinsey’s “Three Horizons of Growth Framework.” McKinsey sees the Navigator as a vital tool that helps to identify and prioritize opportunities after an iterative testing and learning process, which may lead to scale-up businesses and/or full-fledged business activities for your company. 

Module 6: Interactive Knowledge Sharing Session with the Experts

During our final session together, we will review questions that you might have following the first 5 modules, which will help guide Dr. Marc Gruber and Dr. Sharon Tal as they take a deeper dive into some of the topics surrounding the Market Opportunity Navigator. This will be a great opportunity for you to ask questions to two of the greatest market opportunity experts. This will be a 90 minutes session. 

MEET THE ICSB GLOBAL NAVIGATING MARKET OPPORTUNITIES, PROFESSORS

Marc Gruber

Marc Gruber

Marc Gruber, Vice President for Innovation at EPFL and full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL and Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization

Dr. Sharon Tal-Itzkovitch

Dr. Sharon Tal-Itzkovitch

Dr. Sharon Tal-Itzkovitch, Ico-founder and former executive director of the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a senior lecturer on marketing and entrepreneurship

Contact:

ICSB Global Program Director: Dr. Tony Mendes (email: mendesa@umkc.edu)
ICSB Global Program Assistant: Ms. Jordyn Murphy (email: jordyn@icsb.org) or tel: 202-994-0704
ICSB Executive Director: Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy (email: aymanelt@icsb.org) or tel: 202-468-3133