By Vlerick Business School © prof. dr. Yannick Dillen
Opportunity Overview
Find a problem worth solving.
Most idea generators hand you a product. This one hands you a customer and a problem: a situation that may be frustrating, costly or slow enough that someone would pay for it to change — and a first step to find out whether that is true.
- 1. Tell us your context
- Skills, experience, the people you can actually reach.
- 2. Generate opportunities
- Six problems at a time, always different.
- 3. Go and check
- Each one comes with a validation step for this week.
Example — not a real result
A ready-made idea looks like this
“An AI app that helps students be more productive.”
No named customer, no situation, nothing you can check on Monday morning.
An opportunity looks like this
Independent physiotherapists lose billable hours rewriting insurer paperwork after each session
Who faces it: Solo physiotherapists with one to three rooms who bill insurers directly.
Notes are written during the session, then re-entered into the insurer portal in the evening. Rejected claims come back weeks later with little explanation, and chasing them may cost more than the claim.
First step this week: Interview two physiotherapists. Ask “Walk me through the last claim you sent” — not “Would you use an app?”
Hypothesis — needs validation