Opportunity Recognition and Leveraging One’s Experience

William A. Sahlman, Harvard Business School

William Sahlman, professor at Harvard Business School, provides an example of opportunity recognition by relating the story of how John Osher, the creator of the Spin Pop, leveraged his experience into a new market–spin toothbrushes. Sahlman highlights how Osher and his team took their experience and applied it in a new setting by proactively searching to identify a gap in the current market that had potential for high profit.