Opportunity Assessment
A disciplined screen that turns a promising idea into a sized, costed, risk-weighted verdict.
Opportunities die from unexamined assumptions, not from lack of enthusiasm. We run candidate opportunities through a consistent gauntlet: explicit scoring, right-sized market estimation, unit-level economics, and an assumption map that identifies the cheapest test of the riskiest belief.
Who this is for
Leadership teams triaging multiple growth options with one budget.
How the work is done
Screen systematically
An attractiveness × feasibility scoring model with weights agreed before scores are assigned (the order matters, it is the difference between analysis and rationalization). Analytic-hierarchy-process style pairwise weighting where stakeholders disagree.
Size and cost
A right-sized market estimate (compressed triangulation) and unit-level economics: contribution per unit, break-even volume, and capital required to reach it under conservative assumptions.
Map the assumptions
Every opportunity rests on a handful of load-bearing beliefs. We rank them by impact × uncertainty and design the cheapest decisive test for each, the experiment plan is often the most valuable deliverable.
Recommend with gates
A stage-gate recommendation: pursue with defined tranches and kill criteria, park with re-evaluation triggers, or pass with reasoning recorded so the option can be re-examined when facts change.
How the Opportunity Assessment engagement runs
We begin with the decision, use the evidence that can genuinely change it, and make the reasoning reviewable from first input to final handover.
What we need to begin
- The opportunity set, with each option stated as a distinct commitment rather than a theme.
- The screening criteria and any hard constraints: capital, capability, regulatory, or reputational.
- Rough economics for each option, however provisional, plus who supplied them.
- The threshold that would make an option worth pursuing, agreed before scoring begins.
If an input is unavailable, we state the gap, its effect on confidence, and the agreed workaround. It is never quietly ignored.
Your four-phase engagement map
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Phase 1
Screen systematically
An attractiveness times feasibility scoring model with weights agreed before scores, using AHP-style pairwise weighting where stakeholders disagree.
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Phase 2
Size and cost
A right-sized market estimate and unit-level economics: contribution per unit, break-even volume, and capital required under conservative assumptions.
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Phase 3
Map the assumptions
Rank the load-bearing beliefs by impact times uncertainty and design the cheapest decisive test for each.
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Phase 4
Recommend with gates
A stage-gate recommendation: pursue with tranches and kill criteria, park with triggers, or pass with reasoning recorded.
Methods and models we draw on
- Weighted scoring models
- AHP-style preference weighting
- Compressed TAM triangulation
- Break-even & contribution analysis
- Assumption mapping (impact × uncertainty)
- Cheapest-decisive-test design
- Stage-gate structuring
Methods are chosen for the problem, not the brochure, expect a subset of these, applied properly, plus whatever the evidence demands.
The decision this enables
A ranked, costed answer to “which of these deserves money?”, with the tests that keep it honest.