Who do you and your team know up the value chain in the companies that are likely suppliers to your proposed business and to your competitors?

The Connectedness test

Who do you and your team know up the value chain in the companies that are likely suppliers to your proposed business and to your competitors? In suppliers to companies in other industries that offer substitute products for yours? Be sure you have names, titles and contact info. Who do you and your team know down the value-chain among customers you will target, both today and tomorrow? Names, titles and contact info, please. Who do you and your team know across the value-chain among your competitors and substitutes? Names, titles and contact info, please. Putting the seven domains model into action using the seven domains model requires a considerable amount of data. Mere opinions that an opportunity is attractive will not suffice and will destroy the credibility of the aspiring entrepreneur in the eyes of others. Where do we get all the data we need? Much of the data the model calls for can be obtained quickly from secondary sources: trade and other business publications in the library or on the Internet, government reports and so on. Typically, though, some primary data – from interviews, observation, focus groups or surveys of prospective customers and/or industry participants, or market experiments – are necessary for the two micro-level assessments comprising the lower row in the model and for understanding the industry’s critical success factors.