White space

White space analysis assesses how much missed opportunity there is within the business, between business units, partners and with existing customers, products and markets. The method here can be applied to any of these viewpoints.

Benefits

Rank different indicators easily and efficiently
Quickly find points of convergent and divergent thinking in teams
Use as discussion point around divergences
Highly cost effective

Tip: management teams often spend hours debating issues before they take a vote. Use this and other rating tools to determine where the disagreements are first and then focus only on these. You should find your workshops and meetings are far more efficient and rich in better learning as a result.

Disadvantages

May produce considerable bias with small numbers of respondents

Steps to complete

Hover your mouse over an Indicator to see the question you are answering then select your rating for each.
Rate all the indicators and save your selections.
Invite others to make their selections too.
Click the Average button to display your and their ratings in a visual Spider Chart.
Click the Results button to see your averages by Indicator, your invitees or all Shaping Tomorrow members’ ratings.
Look for substantial differences of opinion between your view and your invitees and discuss these as appropriate.
Have everyone re-score if opinions change as a result of the discussion.
‘Decide’ your course of action: either Act now!, Not yet, Watch, Indifferent, Forget, Complete

Collaboration
'White space' can be shared with others or kept private using the 'Visible to' fields and through the 'tag', 'report', 'share'', 'link and 'comment' functionality. Use 'tag' and/or 'report' to aggregate your analyzes, 'share' with others via email, Facebook and Twitter etc. or add a 'comment' to ask others where they agree/disagree and encourage them to make their own analysis from their unique vantage point.

Further reference

White space (management): Wikipedia

History

First propounded as a method to look for internal opportunities, by Rummler and Bracher, 1991, White Space analysis has extended to look at spaces between business units and beyond to customers, prospects, products and markets.

Contact us
Even with all the advice and tools we have provided here starting a foresight project from scratch can be a daunting prospect to a beginner. Let us know if you need help with this method or want a group facilitation exercise or full project or program carrying out by us. We promise to leave behind more internal knowledgeable people who can expand your initiative for better organizational performance.

Are there other enhancements or new methods you would like to see here? Let us know and we will do our best to respond with a solution quickly.

Copyright
Some rights reserved. This particular part of the website is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

White space

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