GuidesHow to2 min
How to find the job worth funding
Walk the work. Score waits, rework, and hero jobs. Fund a constraint with a user — not a whiteboard of ideas.
Stop asking for ideas. Ideas are cheap. Constraints are expensive. Fund the job that is stuck often enough that a better means would be paid for — in money or in hours. A painful thing that happens once a year is a drama. A daily wait is a product.
SINLE starts every Spark here: walk the work, steal the unofficial spreadsheet, write the job in the user’s words. We do not start with a tool roundup. If you cannot name who does what today, there is nothing to invent yet — and we will say no in writing.
The sequence below is how you pick one bet. A portfolio in week one lets the weak one hide. Finish or kill the first unknown before you open a second.
Score it so a weak bet cannot hide
Walk one cycle. List waits. Score each: how often, how much it hurts, whether you can change it. A daily 40-minute wait beats a dramatic once-a-year failure. Pick the top score. Write it in the words of the person who does it. That is the only bet that gets money this month.
A portfolio in week one is how the weak idea survives. Finish or kill the first unknown before you open a second.
The sequence
Do these in order. Skip a line and you are back to a workshop.
- 01
Walk one full cycle without talking
Write waits, handoffs, and anything that needs a hero. Meetings about the job are not the job.
- 02
Steal the unofficial tools
Spreadsheets, jigs, night-shift notes. Informal tools are a map of what the official process failed to do.
- 03
Score frequency × pain × your right to change it
A painful rare event may not be a product. A daily wait might be.
- 04
Write the job in the user’s words
If you translate too early, you will fund a cleaner problem.
- 05
Pick one
A portfolio in week one lets the weak bet hide. Finish or kill the first unknown before you open a second.
Keep these
- Opportunity is a constraint with a user, not an idea count.
- If it happens once a year, you have a drama, not a product.
Do this before you spend
- 01Walk one cycle and write the waits. Do not hold a meeting about the job.
- 02Score three candidates. Fund one.
- 03Write that job in the user’s words, on one line.
Send the line. If there is no user and no Tuesday, we will say no. That is the useful outcome.
Questions
- How do companies find innovation opportunities?
- Start with friction: hours that should be minutes, a workaround that became the job, systems that do not talk. Name the job and the unknown. Then test. Do not start with a tool roundup.
Next how-to
- How to test an idea before you buildA test is a user, a thin lie, and a number. If you cannot fake it this week, you are not ready to spend on the real thing.
- How to write an innovation briefOne page, not a deck: the stuck job, the unknown, what you already tried, the kill rule, and what you will not fund.
- How to stand up an R&D podDo not hire a chief of innovation first. One unknown, two or three people, a kill rule on day one, and a door into the real work.
Next
Send the one job you would fund.
Spark maps the stuck job and writes invent, reshape, or no. $750. You keep the note.