Opportunity Scanner

Where do changing conditions intersect with problems you can observe and beneficiaries you can reach?

Problem: Opportunity scans often reward fashionable forces and broad markets while hiding whether the founder can reach anyone with urgent friction.

Decision: Select a candidate for capture or further observation, not a venture to build.

This method produces an evidence-gated opportunity scan with no more than three leading candidates and one next observation per candidate. A scan may finish with no ranked candidate when demand evidence is missing.

Inputs

• Domains, workflows, or communities you can access directly.
• Forces that may be changing behaviour, cost, regulation, capability, or coordination.
• Existing observations, sources, and constraints on investigation.

Steps

1. Bound the field. List the domains and beneficiaries you can reach, plus the reason for that access. Output: an access map.
2. Name changing forces. Record each force with a source and date; label forecasts as assumptions. Output: a force list with claim states.
3. Cross domains and forces. Ask where a force changes an existing workflow or workaround. Output: candidate intersections, including explicit unknowns.
4. Look for behaviour. For each candidate, record observed workarounds, repeated effort, spending, delay, risk, or attempts to switch. Output: an evidence ledger.
5. Apply the demand gates. Require a named beneficiary and struggling moment, urgent lived friction, an observed workaround or spend, two independent credible sources, a reachable distribution path, and a reversible test. Output: eligible candidates plus parked and rejected residue.
6. Reconcile contradictions. Mark each material claim confirmed, corrected, demoted, or open before scoring. Output: a contradiction ledger.
7. Declare comparison criteria. Before ranking, choose context-specific criteria and thresholds such as demand strength, access, proof speed, compounding evidence, risk, and learning value. Output: a frozen rubric.
8. Rank uncertainty honestly. Compare eligible candidates using the same rubric, keep the shortlist to three or fewer, and mark missing evidence rather than awarding imaginary points. Output: a bounded portfolio.
9. Choose the next observation. For each leading candidate, state the cheapest reversible action that could disconfirm the problem or access claim. Output: a next-observation queue.

Opportunity Scan

Candidate	Named beneficiary	Observed friction or workaround	Changing force	Access	Missing proof	Cheapest next observation

Checks

• Every force has a source, date, and claim state.
• Novelty is not counted as demand evidence.
• Tedious or unglamorous work is not rejected for being tedious or unglamorous.
• Ranking criteria and thresholds were declared before candidates were scored.
• Every ranked candidate passed every demand gate; story quality never repairs missing demand.
• Contradictions were reconciled before ranking and rejected residue remains visible.
• The shortlist contains no more than three candidates.
• At least one candidate can lose after the next observation.

Failure Modes

• Trend substitution — attention to a technology stands in for beneficiary behaviour.
• Market-size theatre — a large category hides weak access and low urgency.
• Fixed-grid ritual — arbitrary row, column, or shortlist counts replace judgment.
• Score laundering — missing evidence becomes a neutral score instead of an uncertainty.
• Dream laundering — an attractive future or memorable story substitutes for lived demand.
• Build disguised as test — product development begins before the decisive uncertainty is tested reversibly.

Proof Of Done

The scan contains comparable candidates, traceable observations, a frozen rubric, and a falsifying next observation for the leading candidate.

Action Ladder

1. Do it now — scan one accessible domain against one changing force and capture the strongest friction.

Changes my mind: The method repeatedly favours well-documented trends over directly observable beneficiary problems.

Retrieval

Retrieve this method when you need candidates to compare, especially before committing to the first idea that sounds novel.

Version delta: The scanner now uses context-declared criteria and behavioural evidence instead of fixed matrix sizes and universal signal counts.

Context

• pairs-with Idea Capture — preserve the leading observed friction before evaluation.
• applies-to Business Trend Spotting — turn sourced changes into candidate intersections without treating the trend as demand.
• applies-to Opportunity Atlas — map evidence-qualified wedges, knowledge trails, and reversible tests without exposing private research.
• pairs-with Opportunity Matrix — compare experiments after the evidence-bearing candidates are clear.
• depends-on Purpose — keep the scan anchored to beneficiaries rather than fashionable territory.
• pairs-with Reality — distinguish observed buyer behaviour from attractive interpretation.

Questions

Next question: Which attractive candidate disappears when access and observed behaviour are weighted more heavily than novelty?

• Which missing observation would most change the leading candidate?