In my last post, I talked about how true high-performance companies manage to jump the S-curve, not just once but repeatedly. It is just as important, however, to understand how companies get onto and climb the S-curve in the first place. This requires something we call the Big Enough Market Insight, or BEMI. At Accenture, we believe this is at the heart of all successful businesses. A BEMI is an insight into the future of a market with enough growth potential to generate substantial revenues – and profit – for years to come. An insight so powerful that it puts your company way ahead of the competition, at least for a time.

To be a real high performer, it’s not enough to simply win. You have to win big; so big, in fact, that the market knows immediately that you’re playing in a different league to your competitors. One example is pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Years ago, Novo Nordisk saw that increasing affluence would lead to a change in diet and a drop in physical exercise. The company saw that this would result in a big increase in the incidence of diabetes. In 1999, the company boldly predicted that by 2009 the number of diabetics would triple to 300 million, from the 100 million at the time. Despite being a relatively small player in the insulin market, Novo Nordisk made a push for global dominance. And it worked. The company now has a 52 percent share of the world’s  insulin market.

A case of being in the right place at the right time? Partly, perhaps. But this is about a lot more than just luck. High-performance companies see and grab such opportunities because they are constantly on the lookout for the next BEMI. This could be something entirely new, or it can be a game-changing product or service offering that totally rewrites the rules of a given market.

Of course, all that glitters is not gold. So not all perceived BEMIs turn out to be BEMIs in the long run. The Segway is a startling piece of technical innovation, but it’s a product still searching for a BEMI. High-performance companies are able to identify true BEMIs, because they ask themselves a number of vital questions. Firstly, they ask is this insight big enough to justify the investment it will require? Secondly, is the insight valuable enough? Or how much will customers be willing to pay for a new product or service and how many potential customers are there? And finally, is this insight certain enough? Novo Nordisk’s prediction of a sharp rise in the number of people with diabetes turned out to be true. Meanwhile, Segway’s gamble that consumers were eager for a revolutionary new form of transportation has so far proven less of a winner.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, and many BEMIs look startlingly obvious today. Who can imagine today’s consumer world without the Apple iPad or the Nintendo Wii? But these products exist solely because their makers saw real demand for products that did not yet exist. What makes these companies true high-performance businesses is that they are able to predict a world that would be, as opposed to a world that could be, or might be. What now seems obvious to most of us was based on real market insight and early commitment to a significant shift in market conditions. Our research shows repeatedly that high-performance companies are those that are able to identify BEMI opportunities from certain trends and are prepared to exploit those trends well before they occur.

In my next post, I’ll be talking about how successful companies achieve what we call threshold competence: the level of competence needed to sustain a successful business. Until then, I’d like to leave you with a couple of questions, that should help you decide whether your company is on course to identify its next BEMI.

1.         How does your company identify BEMIs?

2.         Is your company currently working on a BEMI initiative?