Devoted to how insight is developed, shared and acted on
Fly With the Dragons
When we talk about putting a commercial value on research results, many people start to feel uneasy – they think “I can’t do it” or “they haven’t given me the numbers I need”. Some insight professionals will claim that the reason that consultants can do this is that they have access to far more financial information.But have you ever watched Dragon’s Den and listened to the Dragons say whether or not an idea is likely to make money? How do they do it? Can we do it? Of course we can!
Take a guess
Watch the Dragons next time the programme is shown. Every time an inventor starts their sales pitch, you’ll see the Dragons scribbling on their notepads. What do you think they’re writing? It’s probably some mental estimates such as:
- How many people could this apply to?
- How much could it sell for?
- What’s the cost?
- What’s the potential income?
- Who else could do this?
- Can we patent/protect it?
- What share could we get?
In each case, they are making intelligent guesses – and they may come up with a different answer overall. However, every one of them will probably have an answer that is of the same order of magnitude.
Practice makes perfect!
In the world of insight, we need to improve our ability to make intelligent estimates. To do this,
- You don’t need figures from your internal clients
- You don’t need special skills
- All you need is to trust your judgement
What matters is to be able to judge whether something is worth millions of pounds, or just thousands. So practice! Every time you’re faced with a seemingly valuable insight, ask yourself “What would the Dragons think? What would they ask? Why might they dismiss it?” You’ll be surprised. It doesn’t take long before you start making judgements automatically, and perhaps come up with some unexpected answers.
And next time you watch Dragon’s Den, you may find yourself predicting their responses much more accurately!
The Dragon’s Den approach is just one of the techniques developed on our Commercial Thinking course – click here for details.
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