A landmine is something that could blow up your high-stakes project. Consider 3 points: 1) Landmines pose a greater threat in unfamiliar terrain, so be extra careful outside your core. 2) We don’t like to think about unhappy thoughts–like landmines–so be diligent in investigating assumptions that could become landmines. 3) No one steps on a landmine they can see. So the team’s first job is to make all assumptions visible… and then determine which might be a landmine.
To see how this is done, view the video at Project De-risking with Minesweeper
When you say you want to pursue a “new market,” do you mean the market is truly embryonic? Or is this just a new market for you? If so, it’s better to call the latter an “unfamiliar market.” The customers were already there. It’s you—not the market—that’s new. This is just one example of supplier-centric thinking that permeates B2B innovation. Customer-centric thinking will take you much further.
More in white paper, Innovating in Unfamiliar Markets (page 2).
This is what product developers call the Ansoff Matrix quadrant where you pursue an unfamiliar market with unfamiliar technology. A great place to kill your career. But you can enter it with confidence when you apply new methods for de-risking transformational projects… moving from uncertainty to certainty to defuse potential “landmines.”
More in article, De-Risking Innovation: How to Thrive in the Suicide Quadrant
