2024

Myers Alexander; Kozlova Mariia; Yeomans Julian Scott

One of the defining characteristics of deep tech ventures is that their technology could be adapted to multiple applications. In addition to choosing the market segment that the company will focus on, deep tech ventures need to first make a choice about how to develop their technology and then choose a market opportunity to target. For instance, a tool from The Lean Startup toolkit, called the Market Opportunity Navigator, helps firms to select a market opportunity. In this chapter, we expand the tool to also reflect the earlier technology development choice and also to reflect the high level of uncertainty that surrounds these decisions. A simulated case company (based on a real deep tech venture) is used to demonstrate the novel Technology Opportunity Navigator. Due to the additional complexity of the resulting model, the novel sensitivity analysis tool, SimDec, was employed to provide insights into the different dimensions of the decision. We then show how the tool and visualized results can be incorporated back into the firm’s strategy development process. The chapter contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by showing how analysis can reduce decision-making uncertainty. We contribute to the sensitivity analysis literature by showing how qualitative, multi-criteria decision-making can be supported by SimDec.