I know it's been way too long since I posted a new entry, but some personal and professional priorities have kept me away from the blog. In the meantime, I've been reading some really great work by Dr. Brian Glassman who just completed his Ph.D. in innovation management. You can read his blog at TechRD.com/blog.

On Monday I'll return with a whole new post for the next installment for White Space - The Book.

Introduction

(Part 1)

The history of Silicon Valley, and of successful business in general is written in white spaces. By combining and then recombining changes in technology, value chains and business models, we create, capture and bring to the mainstream white space opportunities that reshape and redefine markets and commerce on a daily basis.

Some white spaces are additive – creating market growth by capturing new opportunities in existing markets like design for purpose in the EDA marketplace, or navigation systems in automobiles. Some white spaces are expansive – growing the size of existing markets by bringing in new market participants through expanding the market boundaries via lower price entry points and feature changes that suddenly capture an entirely new segment of a market by expanding the boundaries of your market at its extents.  And finally, some white spaces represent entirely new markets as a result of creating an entirely new value proposition that creates an entirely new market space. The iPod, Tivo,  Cirque de Soleil and SouthWest Airlines are all examples of this completely new value proposition white space.

Why should we care about these  “White Space” opportunities? As W.Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne point out in their seminal work Blue Ocean Strategy, it’s because product and service launches in new White Spaces (what they call Blue Oceans) provide the highest growth and profit.

Despite this overwhelming evidence that pursuing new market “white spaces” yields the highest growth and profit, a recent poll by the Innovating to Win blog shows that less than 40% of the poll respondents look for Whitespace opportunities in defining an entirely new product. Clearly the majority of businesses still depend on product extension and audience expansion for the majority of their new opportunities.

White Space is about changing this balance by providing a complete and dependable methodology for discovering white space opportunities and capturing them.

The Idea
White Space is not only a book about market innovation and how to identify opportunities to create, capture, sustain and profit from new markets, it's also the fundamental story of innovation in the Silicon Valley in particular and the world in general. Creating new markets through innovative new products and value propositions has powered our economic systems since the beginning of time. The process of market opportunity discovery and development of new, innovative value has changed and become more complex as our society has evolved, but the foundational premise of delivering new value to create new market opportunities remains the same.
In today's turbulent economy, this market focused innovation process is needed more than ever, and we need to work hard and fast to innovate our way out of the dilemma of economic stagnation by creating real, relevant, value again.
The Process
Over the next several months we will be blogging the majority of the material to be included in the book - White Space - that will be published late this year. We'll blog sections of chapters every week and invite your commentary and suggestions for additions, modifications and deletions. Together we'll write the definitive volume on new market creation.
Our Invitation
We invite you to come with us as we examine the lessons of the history and process of innovation and propose a methodology for market innovation that creates new, relevant value and sustainable competitive advantage in new markets. Welcome to White Space - The Book.