Customer needs drive businesses towards success. Can you offer something that none of your competitors in the market has to offer? Can you reduce the gap between your potential customers and your business? This is known as the exploration of white space in business!
Large multi-national corporations seek out the unspoken needs of their customers which are not fulfilled by any of their competitors and use them to uncover numerous growth opportunities.
Surveying the demands and needs of customers in the market can help any business develop new and innovative ideas which allow it to stand out from the crowd.
How do you define white space opportunities?
White space in a business is referred to as the gaps in customer needs. It is a space where the unmet and unspoken demands of the customers are identified, giving rise to innovation.
A thorough white space analysis allows the business to unravel opportunities related to product development and identifying a potential new target audience. In the IP industry, white space analysis explores the areas with a negligible patenting activity that could be patented in the future, giving rise to a number of growth opportunities and innovations.
One of the most impressive outcomes of whitespace analysis is that it saves a lot of product selling time, allowing efficient, easier, and faster sales. This is because you have already carried out an in-depth research analysis on your potential customers, and you have already got your customer’s ear.
Exploring white space opportunities completely transforms the processing and sales in a business. The customer needs, which are often identified by the sales team towards the end, have already been recognized initially before product development.
This drives the entire process of product development in the customer’s direction, leading to the formation of an innovative product.
Ways to find the white space opportunities for your business
Recognizing the white space of your company requires preliminary competitive analysis and thorough patent landscape analysis. This defines the identification of gaps between the businesses and customers in the sector and considering various opportunities to fill this gap effectively.
- The process of whitespace analysis in the patent industry begins with the search of what has already been done and exists in the market and generating ideas to offer something new to the target audience. This means that if you already have an innovative idea in mind, you should look for the existing literature associated with it and whether or not it already exists in the market.
- Once you have found the gap where little to no patents have been filed, you should consider conducting a targeted search to look for patents and other relevant data in publicly available databases. This allows an in-depth patent whitespace analysis to clarify whether or not it is the white space for your business.
Methods to discover the white space opportunities of your business
A strategic way to recognize whitespace opportunities for your business is ‘whitespace mapping’. It is defined as a process used to identify the white space of any business from an internal or an external perspective.
- With an externally focused whitespace mapping, the business begins mapping out the available technologies and products in this highly competitive market and identifying whether or not the customer’s needs are being satisfied. This helps the business to eventually find out gaps within the market which can be used as a window of opportunity for the growth of the business.
- On the other hand, the internally focused whitespace mapping exists as an inward-looking tool for the company. It maps out the company’s existing capabilities and features to identify novel opportunities for growth and invention. It helps identify how these innovative ideas can be used to capitalize on. Such an internally focused mapping allows the business to see how effectively they can react to the existing threats in the competitive marketplace.
- Another interesting whitespace mapping type is future-focused mapping. In this type of mapping, the business identifies and analyses the existing market trends to predict and make strategic assumptions on the future trends in the marketplace. Once you recognize what the future market expects from the competitors, you can use it for your benefit to develop innovative technologies and products.
We at Patentskart offer services related to recognizing the latest competitor trends, licensing target identification, technology whitespace, Relative Growth (CAGR) in competitor patent portfolios, hottest R&D locations & leading Markets across generations, most valuable patents, and more.
We provide patent whitespace analysis, patent prosecution, patent licensing, litigation support, patent infringement analysis, competitive landscaping, and portfolio management. Our Intellectual Property (IP) support services firm provides high-end IP research and analytic solutions with visualization models and tools designed to offer valuable insights into complex IP decision-making scenarios.
We have extensively worked with enterprises on varied technologies on specific research objectives like competitor benchmarking, investment decisions, development of future innovation R&D strategies, formulation licensing /acquisitions strategies, and other white space analytical solutions.