Discovery Operations Guide
Opportunities Methods
Find and Define Opportunities
- Go through each Insight and try to define 2-3 Opportunities for each. Use the framework below to record your findings.
- This is not about finding the “right” answers. This is about looking at original research through the lens of what is possible for your team, department, or business line in order to see new and better opportunities on which to work. Strive to find the best opportunities. Again, there is no single right, perfect opportunity. Each Field of Opportunity will have within it multiple solutions to the problems you have studied.
- Not all Insights will produce 2-3 Opportunities; some will produce more than three; some will produce less. Write the Opportunities you find on separate sheets of blank paper and tape or pin them up underneath the associated Insight.
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Sometimes an Insight will not have an Opportunity for your department, team, or business line. This happens when the Insight points to something that is out of your group’s control, such as an IT problem when you’re not in IT, or a clinical problem when you’re not a clinician. As was said in the introduction to this section, communicate Insights like this to your Leadership if you can. Suggest they open a dialogue with the appropriate group. Sharing findings across groups makes possible high impact, future projects.
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Each person on the team should lead at least one round of looking at an Insight through the lens of your department, team or business line and finding Opportunities.
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Take photos of the Insights and Opportunities wall. Ensure you can see each Insight and Opportunity and their relationship in the photos. This documentation will allow you to go back and trace your logic later if there are questions about how you and your team arrived at an Opportunity or if someone would like to expand on your work.
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Go relax. Light exercise can also be useful at this time.
Framework - Find and Define Opportunities
Use this framework as a model for recording the Opportunities you and the team find. Note the relationships between the Insights and Opportunities that emerge from them so that you can follow and explain your logic to your Leadership and Stakeholders.
