Opportunity Brief Writing

Opportunity Brief Writing

Purpose

Writes the assessment produced by the opportunity-value-assessment skill into a concise, 1–2 page Opportunity Brief report (or an equivalent online report) that is understandable to both the technical inventor and the reader making the business decision — without requiring familiarity with the underlying theory.

Based on

The owner's own service — the report template of the Opportunity Value Assessment product (own product, see ../../references/opportunity-brief-template.md for the full template with example content).

Method

1. Opportunity Snapshot. A one-paragraph summary of the opportunity and its potential, in business language — what's being assessed and which angles the report covers.
2. Evaluation Matrix. Present the 2D placement (attractiveness × readiness) produced by opportunity-value-assessment visually, and add a narrative interpretation: what does the placement actually mean for this specific opportunity?
3. Strengths & Gaps. The top 3 strengthening and top 3 weakening factors, with concrete justification (no generic phrases — use numbers or named observations where possible).
4. Market Pathways. 1–3 potential markets/applications, each with: size (TAM), growth, life-cycle stage, entry route, and rationale for why this market fits.
5. Business Snapshot as five questions in plain business language: (1) what's the problem, (2) who has it, (3) what's the current solution, (4) what's our innovation, (5) how could this become a business.
6. Evaluation Lenses table. The seven angles (the 1–5 scores plus 🟢/🟡/🔴 color produced by opportunity-value-assessment) and a short justification for each.
7. Critical Implementation Issues. What needs to be solved before the opportunity can reach its full value.
8. License vs. Startup view. A short recommendation with rationale (see the preliminary direction from opportunity-value-assessment); can be presented as a small comparison table.
9. Recommended Next Steps (3–6 months). A prioritized, concrete action list derived directly from the critical factors — not generic recommendations but actionable steps (e.g. "interview 3–5 potential customers about X," "launch a pilot with partner Y").
10. Always include: a disclaimer (everything is hypothesis- and assumption-based analysis, not a final truth or investment case), a note that the report is not an official invention disclosure and doesn't replace the IP procedures required by the organization's innovation policy, and a confidentiality notice.

Gotchas

• Step 2 (Evaluation Matrix) asks for a narrative interpretation of the placement, not just a redrawn 2x2 grid — restating "attractiveness: high, readiness: medium" without explaining what that combination means for this specific opportunity is the most common way this step turns into a wasted diagram.
• Step 3 explicitly bans generic phrases for Strengths & Gaps — if the underlying opportunity-value-assessment didn't attach numbers or named observations to a factor, don't paraphrase it into a stronger-sounding claim; keep the same level of specificity the source assessment actually had.
• The License vs. Startup view (Step 8) is only ever a preliminary direction inherited from opportunity-value-assessment — presenting it in the brief as a settled recommendation, rather than flagging it as directional, misleads the decision-maker into thinking a real make/license decision has already been made.
• Step 10's disclaimer, "not an invention disclosure" note, and confidentiality notice are not optional boilerplate — because this skill explicitly does not replace an organization's IP procedures, dropping any one of the three when a report gets trimmed to fit "1 page" reintroduces the exact risk the skill exists to avoid.
• This skill cannot be run standalone: without a completed opportunity-value-assessment (2D placement + 7-lens scores) as input, filling in the Evaluation Matrix or Evaluation Lenses table from general impressions instead of that skill's actual output produces a brief that looks authoritative but isn't grounded in the assessment it claims to summarize.

What this skill does NOT do

• Isn't an official invention disclosure and doesn't replace the IP procedures required by a university's/organization's innovation policy — always mention this in the report (see the note text in the template, ../../references/opportunity-brief-template.md).
• Doesn't present scoring, market data, or TRL assessment as final truth — everything is based on information supplied by the client, supplemented by desk research and analyst interpretation; flag this clearly.
• Doesn't write the report without a preceding opportunity-value-assessment evaluation — it needs the matrix placement and 7-lens scoring it produces as input, and doesn't generate them itself from scratch.

Continue from here

• Start of the full chain: ../opportunity-intake-elicitation/SKILL.md → ../opportunity-value-assessment/SKILL.md → this skill
• Related skill in another pack (when the opportunity needs a full business justification): ../../../business-case-and-analysis/skills/business-case-builder/SKILL.md
• This pack's shared guardrails: ../../CLAUDE.md

References

• ../../references/opportunity-brief-template.md — the full report template with example content
• ../../CLAUDE.md — this pack's shared guardrails