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Context Map

Gain a holistic point of view of the context surrounding your business to reveal potential markets and opportunities.

Context Map helps you generate a holistic point of view about the external forces that may affect your business and future experiences. Identify drivers and trends related to social, technology, economic, environment, and regulation factors. Consider changes and trends in consumer needs and expectations, as well as other players in the space. Use it to organize the team’s knowledge and engage in conversation about potential opportunities on how to respond in the landscape.

4-6 people
60-90 minutes

What you’ll need

  • Pens or markers
  • Sticky notes

Prerequisite Activities

  • None

Downloadable Materials

Preparation

step 1

Gather information

Gather information about key factors, drivers, and trends in the external environment that may impact your business and influence the products and services you will offer.

Research may consist of reading articles and trend reports, staying up to date with policy, and looking into the specifics of your theme. This information may already exist from other teams. Ask others to see if the information is available. You may reference existing information or do additional research.

Look into these areas:

 

Socio-cultural:

  • Are there shifts in social or cultural values?
  • Are there changes in demographics, education, and population?

 

Economic:

  • How is the economy?
  • Are there economic trends?

 

Environment:

  • Are there environmental factors that will impact the business?
  • Are there changes in resources and supplies?

 

Technology:

  • Are there emerging technologies that customers are adopting?
  • What technology trends do you see that will impact the business?

 

Regulation:

  • What policies, regulations, or taxes will be enforced in the future?
  • How will these policies affect customers and the business?

 

Customer Needs:

  • Are there critical issues affecting the customer landscape?
  • Are there any shifts in customer behavior?
  • How will the customer needs change?

 

Other Players:

  • Who are the dominant players in this problem space?
  • What are their advantages and disadvantages?
  • Are there unexpected or new competition?

 

Uncertainties:

  • Are there important events that you anticipate but are uncertain of the details?
  • Are there other signals that offer indication of the future?
Tip

Ask, how will X impact our business? How will this drive and influence changes to the products and services that we can offer? X can be factors such as climate change, automation, housing shortages and population growth in high-density urban areas, etc.

step 2

Invite people to share

Invite the team and additional members (e.g. subject matter experts) who have knowledge that can provide more insight about the context.






Instructions

step 1

Setup the space

Put the Context Map worksheet up on a surface where everyone can easily add to it.

step 2

Select a focus

Add your business and the general theme of the problem space to the center of the worksheet. This will guide the team to focus on which external forces are relevant.

step 3

Capture key drivers and trends

In no particular order, pick a box to start with. Add key drivers and trends into each box until they’re all complete. Use one sticky note per key information.

For each box, consider these questions:

  • What are the key drivers, trends, and/or events related to this factor?
  • What evidence supports these?
  • How have these evolved over time?
  • What is the nature of these changes?
  • What effect will these changes have on the business?
step 4

Review and discuss

Take turns to read out the contents from the box; one box per person. Then, start a discussion. Is there anything missing? Is there anything inaccurate? What is surprising? What is a concern? Is there a need for additional research and information?

step 5

Next steps

Put this up in your workspace. Make this visible to share with others and spark conversations.

Revisit this context map from time to time as the world changes. Update it as new things may influence your business.