Diversification Opportunity Tool

Our Diversification Opportunity Tool (DIOPTO) incorporates the relatedness-framework to evaluate the fit between existing competences and specific opportunities. In economics and adjunct disciplines, the framework has recently emerged as powerful analytical dimension for firms’ and regions’ diversification processes. This research has repeatedly shown that economic developments follow specific technological trajectories that evolve around sets of related competences. Being strong in the core-competences of such a trajectory substantially eases entering or expanding other activities part of the same trajectory. Using most up-to-date scientific methods and suitable data, DIOPTO allows identifying trajectories, positioning existing strength within these, and quantify the fit of the latter to not-yet-exploited opportunities within the trajectories.

The second dimension of DIOPTO gives insights into (future) economic potentials of activities. As for the ease of entering activities, DiveOpp uses latest scientific results to track contemporary economic-technological developments defining future boundaries and sources of economic value. These are linked to the complexity of the underlying activities; whereby more complex activities offer two benefits. First, they tend to be economically more rewarded, as they generate higher value added. Second, they build the foundation for future upgrading into even more complex activities. Assessing and measuring complexity is literally complex and is highly dependent on context requiring smart use of a wide range of data sources and sophisticated methods, aspects that mark the very competences of DiveOpp.

By adapting and applying DIOPTO to the specific situations of firms (e.g., firms seeking to put their technological competences to work in new markets), support organizations (e.g., business park operators assessing the fit and opportunities of their portfolio of incumbents) and regions (e.g., regional business developers looking for ways to secure their regions’ long-term prosperity), DiveOpp makes science-based assessments and evaluations of scenarios. In addition, we help in building a sound basis for diversification decisions and in uncovering otherwise hidden and highly attractive opportunities.