The number of business opportunities are increasing rapidly. Technology is enabling new business models, new markets and marketing methods, and making it easier to test new ideas.
Plus, these new ways of working are communicated immediately, globally. We have seen the concept of ‘best practice’ go from being a standard approach to business improvement twenty years ago, to being a lagging indicator today. (In some cases, it is little more than duplicating the mistakes of others.)
The challenge becomes how to take advantage of this ever enlarging pool of possibilities, because it isn’t possible to keep pace with everything all at once. Training is a critical component but it is too slow as a single response. By the time your organisation has learned the new skill set, there is no competitive edge, by then it is a hygiene factor.
Part of the answer is to change how you work, and to have a system for deciding which opportunities are must be addressed now and which can be left for a later day.